Dr. Breedlove to unveil Apple's tablet at State of the Union following the Toyata Recall

Yes, according to Google Trends, this headline should be the most popular search item of the past few seconds prior to posting. Google Trends monitors what the world wants to know, and what the world wants to know right now. The list changes dramatically over the course of seconds, minutes and hours as each day unfolds. However, over time statistics can be drawn from the ever-changing trends. For instance, Google's most searched term of 2009? The word "Twitter." The fastest falling (increasingly less-searched) term of 2009? "John McCain."

As for now, 2010 remains a mess of words, and today is no different. The world awaits two announcements today: Steve Jobs on the release of Apple's new tablet, and Barack Obama on the State of the Union. People are also pretty curious about Dr. Breedlove, who is, as far as I can tell, a psychologist who deals with transsexual mental problems.

As diverse as the human race may be, we all go to the same key words when we have a similar problem. Google.org, the altruistic side of the search giant, realized this and partnered with the CDC to track the spread of the flu. In areas where people searched for "H1N1" there were higher instances of the disease (when considering internet access, etc). As Google puts it:

We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for "flu" is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries are added together. We compared our query counts with traditional flu surveillance systems and found that many search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in different countries and regions around the world. Our results have been published in the journal Nature.

So, while Dr. Breedlove might not provide vaccines to H1N1 or know the cure for AIDS, every search for him (or her?) paints a clearer picture of who we are as a nation, what our preferences are, and what's going on around the world. Now if he would only show us that Apple tablet...