Google Trends: Top Searched Social Media Platforms during COVID-19 and Battle of the Browsers
It’s been a year since COVID-19 broke out. During the initial lockdown, all residents were instructed to stay in and not leave unless it is essential.
As COVID-19 cases began to peak, the days of sitting at home grew longer and longer. With all this new-found home time poses a question:
Which social media platform did people look up the most during COVID-19s initial lockdown in 2020.?
Two platforms out of the top 17 were compared.
Here's the interactive Chart.
According to the graph, you can see the trends between Instagram and Twitter are pretty close.
Twitter is a microblogging social media platform founded back in 2006. It’s focused on interacting with users in the form of “tweets”. As of February 2020, Twitter has a net worth of $60.71 billion.
Instagram is a social media platform founded back in 2010. Its focus is to interact with users using through picture and video galleries. The app is also monetized through ad services given to users as an option for selling goods. Instagram was bought out by Facebook back in 2012 for 1 billion. As of today, Instagram is speculated to be worth over $100 billion. It contributes $20 billion over facebook's annual revenue.
Whether or not Instagram is worth more than Twitter is uncertain but, one thing is for sure, both platforms were getting around the same amount in searches during the initial pandemic.
As seen in the chart, From January to May, “Instagram” was searched more than “Twitter” up until mid-May- where twitter shot up before descending back down right below Instagram searches. September through October Twitters’ trends fluctuate before shooting up around early November and back down.
Battle of the Browsers
A soft analysis between Chrome and Firefox from 2004-present.
Here's the interactive chart.
Google Chrome and Firefox are both web browsers used to access the internet.
Google Chrome was first released back in 2008. This browser is known for its “simple, secure, and faster than ever” user interface. As of May 2020, Google Chrome is Ranked 3rd most valuable company behind Amazon and Apple. Its net worth is around $300 billion, 90% of which comes from ads while the other 10% comes from other internet miscellaneous services.
Firefox was first released back in 2002 as Mozilla.1. During those times, not many people were using this browser. It wasn't until 2004 where Firefox challenged internet explorer with over 1 million downloads in under a year. In 2013, Firefox released FirefoxIOS- its software implemented into smartphones. By the time this happened, Google Chrome was already trending over Firefox due to its fast-growing popularity.
Firefox and Google Chrome are some of the most well-known web browsers. They both been around for some time and didn’t bump head to head until around June 2011. Firefox was off by one point with Chrome in the lead. You can see this as a direct intersection on the chart. Ever since then, the search trends for Firefox have been decreasing.
Whether Firefox turns around with a comeback is unclear. What is clear is the fact that Internet Explorer, another web browser, stands no chance against these browsers as of March 2020. Take a look below:
Here is the interactive chart.
According to the chart, Internet Explorer has never gained searches above 50. From the one time, it was close (back in January 2004), that number has been declining ever since.
Both Firefox and Internet Explorer bring in low search rates. Yet, Firefox had a flourishing past. Chrome seems to be up and running for more years to come. As of internet explorer, it’s safe to say that it was not a search term circulating around in 2020.
