Chatroulette, Justin Bieber and Haiti: Google’s 2010 Year in Search

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Here at TIME, we just finished putting together our annual exhaustive compendium of this year in the news. In the same spirit, Google is giving a look behind the search curtain at the top queries from the past 12 months.

Google’s Zeitgeist is an annual tradition in which the company parses the billions of search queries in its system to come up with the biggest movers and shakers. This year’s list isn’t particularly surprising. It was the year of the Bieber, as wee Justin charts the top spot in the biggest movers in entertainment, beating out established stalwarts in Shakira, Eminem, Netflix, and YouTube videos (Lady Gaga, for all her buzz, can’t manage better than sixth.) The World Cup takes the year in sports, with Haiti’s earthquake dominating the news space. (WikiLeaks’ moment in the sun may have come too late — the secret-sharing site can’t be found on Google’s top trends.)

(More on TIME.com: See the top 10 underreported news stories of 2010.)

But the Zeitgeist’s top prize, at it were, is Google’s overall list of movers and shakers. And it’s there where the Bieber meets his Waterloo. Despite legions of tween fans, the Biebs loses out to the iPad (#2) and Chatroulette (#1) as this year’s top trends. You may rap with Luda, Justin. But even you can’t beat out the appeal of overexposed Internet stranges.

See the full list on Google.