Most searched on Google in 2015: ISIS? Trump? No – Lamar Odom

Just to prove that American is not the only country overly populated with shallow people obsessed by celebrities and Hollywood, Google provides us with the news about the most-searched items online for 2015.
So, was it ISIS? The Paris attacks? The worst refugee crisis since World War II? Would you be disappointed if it was Donald Trump?

Well, it’s worse than that. Much worse.

The top Google search worldwide this year was for information on Lamar Odom. If you’re saying to yourself, “Lamar who?” consider that he was a semi-star for the Los Angeles Clippers and later the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association. What's more, these Google numbers are not only for the Los Angeles area or the United States, they are global.
How does a retired basketball player in the U.S. become the most Googled person/topic in the world? He marries a Kardashian (I forget which one), goes on a wild, drug-induced binge at a Nevada whorehouse, and nearly dies from an overdose.

Odom’s odyssey eclipsed the searches for all of the major news events with worldwide implications –- a category that apparently includes the evolution of another Kardashian relative, Caitlyn Jenner. (In the photo above of the Kardashians, Odom is at the top of the staircase; just below -- I believe -- is Bruce Jenner, now known as Caitlyn.)

Ranking behind Odom in the U.S. were two movies: “Jurassic World” and “American Sniper.” The bizarre social media sensation known simply as “the dress” (was it blue or white?) also ranked highly. And the scandalous information surrounding Bill Cosby and Charlie Sheen were also very big on Google.
In the most-searched people list, Donald Trump was no doubt incensed that that he ranked just fourth, below Odom, Jenner and Ultimate Fighting champion Ronda Rousey.

To be clear, there were 897 million searches related to Paris, the target of deadly terrorist attacks in November – a huge number. In comparison, yearlong searches about the refugee crisis created by ISIS and the bloody Syrian civil war amounted to 23 million.That was about 1/20^th of the 439 million searches related to British singing sensation Adele, with most of those searches (I would suspect) coming in the past month or so after the release of her album, “25,” which is breaking records for digital sales.