Google's Top Searches of 2014
TANK: I'm Manisha Tank in Hong Kong. You're watching News Stream and these are your world headlines. New video shows the school auditorium where Pakistani military students were massacred by Taliban militants. 145 people were killed, nearly all of them children. Pakistan has declared three days of mourning and the prime minister has lifted a moratorium on the death penalty for terrorism. At least eight people have been killed in an attack on a bank in southern Afghanistan. Police say three attackers stormed the bank in Helmund Province, this after a suicide blast outside. In a gun battle all of the attackers were killed as well as five civilians, a police officer and two soldiers. A memorial service has been held at a cathedral in central Sydney for victims of Monday's hostage standoff. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has promised to launch a full investigation. That includes a look into why the shooter wasn't on a security watch list even though Mr. Abbott said he had a long history of violence. A movie theater in New York has canceled Thursday's premiere of Sony's new movie The Interview. It comes after a hacker group threatened anyone who goes to see the film. U.S. authorities say they don't believe it's a credible threat, but they are investigating. Now, Google has released its top searches for 2014. The late actor Robin Williams is heading that list. He passed away in August. As always, the list is extremely varied. There are threats like Ebola and ISIS, but the top 10 also includes major sporting events like the World Cup and the Sochi Olympics. And at number seven Conchita Wurst, an Austrian drag queen. So one of the other top searches for the year was flappy bird, the free mobile game created by a man in Vietnam. But he was so overwhelmed with the attention that he pulled his game and didn't allow people to download it. Earlier I spoke to Joyce Hau of Google here in Asia. And I began by asking her about the searches for Flappy Bird.</s>JOYCE HAU, GOOGLE ASIA: It was adorably low tech, right. Flappy Bird was an app made by one developer in one weekend out of Vietnam of all places. And it just caused such a stir because it was so addictive, frustratingly so. But it really took him, Dong Nguyen, the developer, announcing that he would take this off the app stores for it to become viral in its popularity. So people were searching for Flappy Bird as a kind of last chance to download the game before he took it down.</s>TANK: It's remarkable. You have to tell someone you can't get ahold of something and then those searches spike, don't they? OK, in a bit of a handbrake turn, twin tragedies for Malaysia Airlines, but you saw people taking to Google in a big way to look up what had happened to these planes.</s>HAU: Yeah, that's right. Obviously it was huge, especially here in Asia. People were searching for Malaysia airlines and news of where the plane could possibly be in the case of MH370. But what was remarkable there was that searches for MH370 found were 14 times higher than searches for MH370 lost. So I think that really speaks to the optimism, hopefully, of people really hoping for good news of the planes reappearance.</s>TANK: And on searching for the plane, did you notice that there was a difference in regions searching for the plane?</s>HAU: Definitely here in Asia. Of course, Malaysia was kind of the ground zero of searches for the plane, for the airline as well. And worldwide, Malaysia gained a lot of scrutiny as well as searches for Kuala Lumpur jumped twice as much as previous levels.</s>TANK: Now, speaking of Asia, it was a huge year for elections. Two of the biggest democracies around. You had India and Indonesia, you also had Taiwan, a big election there. People again taking to Google to find out a bit more about candidates. And this was especially the case in Indonesia. You've got the two top candidates at the time in obviously Jokowi was number one there, but people were searching for them in a big way.</s>HAU: Yeah, that's right. So here in Indonesia you can see that Jokowi was number one of all trending terms this year. He's super popular above even, you know, pop stars and rivals as well. And the same goes for India as well. So Narendra Modi even beat Shah Rukh Khan in searches for the first time a politician beat a Bollywood star as big as Shah Rukh Khan. So that was a big year for him.</s>TANK: Yeah, I can imagine that is a very big deal as well. But that wasn't necessarily the case in Indonesia, was it? You still had, what was it, one of the big reality shows, the talent shows, that...</s>HAU: Oh, yes, Indonesian Idol searched for ten times more than presidential debates. So I guess people wanted to vote there more for their favorite pop idol than look at the presidential debates.</s>TANK: Now, the big subject if you're someone who loves your gadgets this year has been phablets. And that has been evident on your list. Let's take a look at consumer electronics. Here, where you've got the consumer electronics, these are all the top phablets at the moment. These are basically the big phones. What is this telling us, this trend?</s>HAU: 2014 was the year that phablets went mainstream. So if you remember back in 2011 when Samsung started coming out with the Note, people were laughing at them and saying this is kind of an awkwardly large phone. You know, why would you ever want to hold something as big as a Note up to your face. But, you know, as screen sizes got bigger and bigger and bigger people really saw the value of having that larger screen to watch videos on, to take selfies on, and this year Apple really embraced that with the iPhone 6 and their iPhones 6plus, of course.</s>TANK: Yeah, interesting. I mean, YouTube, one of the most searched videos has been the Apple iPhone 6 bending...</s>HAU: Bendgate.</s>TANK: Bendgate. Exactly. If we look at tech devices, here you go, we're talking about -- and this is in particular for India. It's very interesting that the ones that made the list here and the reasons why they made the list.</s>HAU: Yeah, so Xiomi had a huge year this year. Of course, the Chinese handset maker released three flagship phones this year, one of them was this higher end Mi3, one that was a lower end RedMi. And they had also a phablet screen size as well. But it was really remarkable that countries all around China were searching for Xiomi. So Xiomi peaked in Taiwan and Hong Kong, but also Malaysia and India as we have here.</s>TANK: That was a really fascinating conversation we had with Joyce earlier. Now in a remote corner of Serbia, a centries old art form is in danger of disappearing. That story when we return.