• Read Write Web, Thursday, December 15, 2011 12:01 PM

It’s mid-December, which can only mean one thing: Yearly trend wrap-ups! In the telling field of search, Google just released its annual Zeitgeist report, and it’s a doozy. “It was a weird year,” remarks ReadWriteWeb. “Perhaps it's not surprising that, of all the grim and tumultuous events that transpired this year, the top Google searches were mostly frivolous.”

“The No. 1 trending search was Rebecca Black.” Black, if your don’t recall, achieved YouTube infamy for her music video, “Friday.” Yet, as Google must be happy to reports, its own social network, Google+, was the No. 2 trending search. Two Apple gadgets, iPhone 5 and iPad 2, made the top 10 –- all the more remarkable, RWW notes, because the former doesn’t even exist. “Right next to the iPad is, of course, Steve Jobs,” RWW adds. “The only serious news on the list -- unless you count Casey Anthony -- is the Japanese energy company Tepco, operator of the Fukushima I power plant, which caused a nuclear disaster this year after a massive earthquake.”

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