Googled

No, that would be Britney Spears

Top celebrity searches worldwide since 2004

I'd bet that Sarah Palin wins that title today.

who's Sarah Palin. ???Related to Michael??

mcain vice presidential nominee margo. but you prolly know that by now

ayuh, i went straight to google images as soon as the story broke...

According to Google zeitgeist for Sept. 24th 2009:
Updated 42 minutes ago

1. george o malley grey s anatomy
2. karaoke tube
3. seviche
4. pocketbook monologues
5. ruth bader ginsburg
6. who is big poppa on real housewives of atlanta
7. the blind side
8. matte nail polish
9. the office season 6 episode 2
10. 5 stages of grief

http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

I'm proud to say that I have absolutely no idea who these people are:

gaines adams
preston castle (assuming that's a person, not a building)
tim mccarver
red robin (again, assuming that's a person)
raj rajaratnam

Why would anyone google them?

I'm only familiar with Tim Mccarver as he's a play by play announcer during certain baseball games and Red Robin is a fast food burger joint in which I've seen its commercials before. As for the rest? Their mind boggling trends to me as well....

Just a heads-up about the current lists, the most popular terms that are steady are not included on the lists (otherwise they'd never change and you'd see stuff like "yahoo", "google", "ebay" etc at the top of every list) and an algorithm filters out the regular suspects and highlights what has changed.

So the trends the search engines publish aren't the most searched terms, just the ones with the most upward mobility in the recent timeframe they are referencing.

Ah, so desu. Wakarimasu.

Ten years later? Thankfully no.
Trending in March, 2018:

Seems interesting