As part of Google’s delve into the World Cup 2014, (by the way, congrats Germany!) they added onto their current platform, Google Trends. The Trends website allows the user to look up the popularity of a search term, see the current most searched terms, and more. For the WC, Google added a slick, flat designed page all about the statistics behind World Cup searches. For instance, for each game, certain statistics are shown, including the most searched player, the overall mood of each team, most searched team and more. On the homepage, interesting facts about World Cup were shown, such as searches spiked 34x in the Netherlands to see if Ron Vlaar’s penalty really did spin back over the line when nobody was paying attention. I highly recommend going to the site, as it is very interesting.
But, if you are a Brazilian fan, you probably don’t want any more to do with the World Cup after the unfortunately embarassing 7-1 loss to Germany. In fact, the searches for the World Cup in Brazil are already focused toward the 2018 World Cup, shutting the loss behind them. Luckily, Google has you covered, Brazilian fans. Google revealed to NPR that, when putting stats on the website, they screened for to negative things searched in Brazil. Some of the things searched were just to negative, such as “shame”, so Google left it out of their experimental website. It’s not as if Google is downplaying the bad news, as they put the Brazilian attitude after the 7-1 game as “heartbroken”, but more highlighting the good and interesting facts. They released an official statement:
“Our social channels exist to share interesting and relevant information to the people who want to hear from us. Unlike your average 16-year-old, we don’t share every single thing we might have to say. Throughout the World Cup, we’ve shared more than 150 tidbits in 13 languages looking at Leaping Legends to Waving the Flag and everything in between. If people want more, they can always use google.com/trends to see what topics are trending at that time. Our primary goal, more than anything else, is to share what matters most at that moment to the most people. And, it’s good to have that goal, as we don’t want to have to rely on penalty kicks.”
Google’s attempt to ease the pain of Brazilian fans is surely considerate and thoughtful. Unfortunately, there isn’t much Google can do. That day will live in infamy in Brazilian hearts forever, not going to be stopped by the lack of some facts on their Trends site. The wound is too deep. Still, it is nice to know that the people running Google aren’t heartless, and care about the millions of Brazilian citizens. On a more cheerful note, Google didn’t try to downplay Germany’s attitude about winning, stating their emotions as “unstoppable” for a couple games in a row leading up to the Final. So again, congrats Germany, and we’ll just have to wait another 4 years for the same amount of global attention and action.
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