Google is celebrating the last 25 years of its search engine, and it is leaning on a heavy dose of pop culture to help it do so.
The tech giant on Monday released a video celebrating the most searched topics, people and events of the last 25 years. And while there was plenty of newsworthy events featured (9/11, the legalization of gay marriage, the Black Lives Matter movement), film, TV and music were also heavily featured.
Among the most searched of the last 25 years include Taylor Swift, the most searched songwriter; Homer Simpson, the most searched Simpsons character; Barbie, the most searched toy; Cristiano Ronaldo, the most searched athlete; Spongebob Squarepants, the most searched cartoon; and Spider-Man, the most searched superhero.
“Typically with year end searches, we’ll do like a top trends of the year, but this felt like a time that we could do something a little bit different,” says KK Walker, executive creative director of the Google Brand Studio in an interview. “It’s a bit like a daunting task, we were thinking about 25 years of pretty much everything that people turn to search for. So it was a bit of: How do we actually boil this ocean?”
The company decided to lean on the idea of progress, showing how the world has evolved since 1998.
“When you start to see what people were searching for then or what they’re still searching for now, you start to see this incredible sense of progress,” Walker adds. “The lens of the story that we wanted to stick to was this sense of progress that we see in the world and of course, the eternal Google optimism that will come with that.”
The company looked for searches with “enduring relevance” or “staying power” that have kept them top of mind for consumers.
“Whether it is Pokemon, which has a huge resurgence now, or Barbie, which has completely turned on what she’s representing, all the way to like the surprises of Bollywood being the most searched movie genre,” Walker says. “It’s just these really kind of incredible bastions of progress that we’re seeing, but they just endure.”
Watch the video:
Google also revealed its most searched list for 2023, with Barbie and Oppenheimer taking the top two spots in the movie category. The Indian thriller Jawan, Sound of Freedom and John Wick Chapter Four rounded out the top five.
In the TV category, The Last of Us and Wednesday were tops, followed by Ginny & Georgia, One Piece and Kaleidescope.
Jeremy Renner was the most-searched actor, followed by Jenna Ortega, Ichikawa Ennosuke, Danny Masterson and Pedro Pascal.
Matthew Perry and Tina Turner led the list in the “passings” category, with Shakira and Jason Aldean the most searched musicians.
