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Google suspends trend alerts in New Zealand after naming murder suspect
Google has suspended Trends alerts in New Zealand following criticism from the government that it published the name of a murder suspect, in violation of a court order.
Google retires more services, consolidates others in continued efficiency bid
When you run as many services as Google does, every once in a while you're going to have to do some pruning. Evidently Mountain View's got the secateurs out, having just announced the next batch of its projects that will be getting axed wound down. For the chop are: AdSense for Feeds, Classic Plus, Spreadsheet Gadgets, Places for Android, and +1 Reports in Webmaster Tools. Other services are being merged into existing properties to prevent overlap, such as Google Storage for Picasa and Drive -- which are now consolidated -- and Insights for Search is now part of Google Trends. Naturally, the search giant claims this is all about streamlining, and improving other core products. If the retired service involves a paid subscription, or legacy data, then you'll need to check the specifics on the official blog to find out how this will affect you, which fortunately for you, is just a tap of the source link away. [Image Credit: Shutterstock]
WoW addons dominate Google Trends
There's no denying that patch 2.4 has been one hot topic today. Not just here on WoW Insider, either. I'd say it's safe to assume Google is a pretty good indicator of what's what on the internet, and Google Trends reveals all.Patch 2.4 and many other WoW-related things dominated March 25th as the most popular Google searches. As of 8 PM CST, out of the top ten searches, only two were unrelated to the World of Warcraft. As you can see above, the Omen Threat Meter ranked number one. Not particularly surprising, since it is one of the most used WoW addons around. If WoW is going to dominate the charts, it should be no shock Omen took the lead, especially on a patch day.As the night goes on, things are tapering off a little bit, but the numbers were still very impressive for most of the day. A screencap of what Omen's search traffic throughout the day looked like is just behind the cut, and you can see pretty clearly when people discovered the patch was coming.
What we google on patch day
Althras on the Suramar (US) realm tipped us to the power that WoW players have over the internet as a whole. It appears that we are affecting the Google Trends data, particularly while the servers have been down. Of the top ten most researched terms on the search engine, WoW related items occupy four slots. Most of us seem interested in mods, since four of the six search terms are related to CT Mods, Titan Panel, etc. Other examples in our search engine monopoly refer to the Netherwing, Skettis and the additional content entering the game in Patch 2.1.0. As Althras puts it, being 8 million strong, with about half of the players being English speaking (give or take) can make a huge impact on the internet when focused on one specific purpose. As we spend our time waiting for the realms to come back up, we also show the internet powers that be that World of Warcraft players are affecting the virtual world around us. [via Althras]
