Tech Internet news
Michael Jackson's stunning death made him the Internet's biggest star this year.
The quest to find out what happened to Jackson in his final hours on June 25 and celebrate his legacy elevated the late entertainer to the top of the Internet's search charts for 2009. On Yahoo, it ended singer Britney Spears' four-year reign on top.
The annual lists released Tuesday were compiled separately by Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., which combined handle two-thirds of the world's Internet searches.
Jackson also grabbed the top spot on the third-largest U.S. search engine, Microsoft Corp.'s Bing, which announced its rankings Sunday. AOL, which relies on Google's search technology, also had Jackson at No. 1.
Besides Jackson, the other new entrants on Yahoo's Top 10 list this year were: No. 2, "Twilight," the vampire story that has spawned two movies, including the recently released "New Moon," that are drawing hordes of teenage girls and their mothers; No. 4, Megan Fox, an actress who starred in the movie "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen;" No. 8, Kim Kardashian, part of a family with their own reality TV series; and No. 9, NASCAR, an automobile racing league.
"New Moon" also made Google's Top 10.
Barack Obama made Yahoo's top searches list in 2008 as a presidential candidate and the President-elect, but fell off after he took office in 2009. The others falling out of the Top 10 were all actresses: Miley Cyrus, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan and Angelina Jolie.
Ask.com, another major search engine, focused its list on the most popular questions posed on its search engine. "How do I get out of debt?" was the second-ranking question of the year. No. 1? "How much should I weigh?"
