The World According to Google

It's been quite a day so far. Barack Obama's Cairo speech has captured the attention of the world, and the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown has kept China and human rights activists on tenterhooks all day. And as usual, Google's role in both has been front and center.

First, Mr. Obama's Egyptian adventure. As is par for the course for this tech-savvy White House, the president's staff immediately posted the speech on YouTube, as well as Facebook, Myspace, and various Twitter accounts. Here's the speech from the White House's YouTube page.

But just how interested is America in Obama's address? As usual, you can always find out via Google Trends, the service that allows users to track what people around the world are searching on Google. It turns out that not everyone cares what the president had to say. Some folks are more interested in other topics. Such as David Carradine's death and, oddly, the real name of MC Hammer. Obama's speech makes the list as the third most popular search, but coming up on his heels is news that fishing captain and author Linda Greenlaw has been convicted of illegally fishing in Canadian waters. And don't forget miracle cures for cancer, which is always a winner. The eighth most popular Google search right now is for Jon Matthews, a British resident who claims a groundbreaking homeopathic remedy has made him the longest-living mesothelioma patient in history. Nice to see the country has a healthy set of priorities.

Meanwhile, Google Blogoscoped has a nice illustration of the disgraceful extent to which Google continues to collaborate with China's government. Today, on Tiananmen Square's 20th anniversary, Google's international Chinese version will give you 44,000 results for "tiananmen massacre." How many results do you get in China itself? Eleven. Nice to see Google has its priorities straight as well.