8 responses

• Jim Cowie Jun 27, 2008
   

  Great article. "According to Matt Richtel of the New York Times, the defense attorney in the case, Lawrence Walters, will use Google Trends to argue that the community's standards are lower than advertised. Walters "plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like 'orgy' than for 'apple pie' or 'watermelon,'" Richtel reports."

   
• Jim Cowie Jun 27, 2008
   

  I love the idea that google's aggregate data is a more accurate guide to what the public believes and does than you can get by asking the public what it believes and does. The slippery slope toward a government panopticon just got a little more slippery.

   
• amanda Jun 27, 2008
   

  "Your fantasies are no longer confined to your head. They're visible, in the aggregate, on Google Trends."

   
• amanda Jun 27, 2008
   

  I wonder what portion of those searches are a product of actual erotic fantasy on the part of the searcher or a product of curiosity. "Oh so _that's_ what a dirty sanchez is...

   
• gregg Jun 27, 2008
   

  wait, *what's* a Dirty Sanchez now?

   
• colby Jun 27, 2008
   

  here ya go gregg: http://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Dirty_Sanchez_(sexual_act)

   
• todd Jun 27, 2008
   

  yeah. dirty sanchez. that's what we all come to babbledog for.

   
• gregg Jun 27, 2008
   

  oh, screech, how the once-mighty have fallen. Also, I feel like I have no good idea of what my community's local standards are, so this google trends data is most intriguing.