There’s no statistical rigor here — but in looking at the past 3 years of best picture winners, it seems the rate of increase in search activity in the weeks leading up to the big night coincide with the winner.
If this holds true, expect Slumdog or Frost/Nixon to win. Depending on what time period you aggregate on inside of the Google tool, it appears Slumdog has the slight advantage.
Google’s Zietgeist 2008 held so much promise as I clicked through from Techmeme, to Google Blog, to it. But with all that data, this is the year end round up? It doesn’t even qualify for the Cliff Notes version. Google — give me unfettered access to your 2008 data, over the course of 2 weeks, and I’ll pull something a little more compelling together. And I know–it’s about making money not understanding human behavior and generating insights. But if you’re going to do it, why not do it Google style?