Most Googled in 2012: Whitney, PSY, Sandy

LOS ANGELES -- The world's attention wavered between the tragic and the silly in 2012, and along the way, millions of people searched the Web to find out about a royal princess, the latest iPad, and a record-breaking sky diver.

Whitney Houston was the "top trending" search of the year, according to Google Inc.'s year-end "zeitgeist" report. Google's 12th annual roundup is "an in-depth look at the spirit of the times as seen through the billions of searches on Google during the past year," the company said in a blog post Wednesday.

People around the globe searched en masse for news about Houston's accidental drowning in a bathtub just before she was to perform at a pre-Grammy Awards party in February.

Google defines topics as "trending" when they garner a high amount of traffic during a sustained period of time.

Korean rapper PSY's "Gangnam Style" music video trotted into second spot, a testament to his self-deprecating giddap dance move. The video is approaching a billion views on YouTube.

FILE - In this Thursday, July 26, 2012, file photo, Britain's Kate, Duchess of Cambridge attends a reception as she visits Bacon's College in London. In Google's 12th annual roundup of global trending searches, Kate Middleton was ranked sixth.(AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)

Superstorm Sandy, the damaging storm that knocked out power and flooded parts of the East Coast in the midst of a U.S. presidential campaign, was third.

The next biggest trending searches globally were a pair of threes: the iPad 3 tablet from Apple Inc. and Diablo 3, a popular video game.

Rounding out the Top 10 were Kate Middleton, who made news with scandalous photos and a royal pregnancy; the 2012 Olympics in London; Amanda Todd, a Canadian teen who was found dead of an apparent suicide in October after being bullied online; Michael Clarke Duncan, the "Green Mile" actor who died of a heart attack in September at age 54; and "BBB12," the 12th edition of "Big Brother Brasil," a reality show featuring scantily clad men and women living together.

Some trending people, according to Google, were as follows:

* Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian sky diver who became the first to break the sound barrier without a vehicle with a 24-mile plummet from Earth's stratosphere;

FILE - In this Friday, April 20, 2012, file photo, Baek Sung-min, 23, reacts after purchasing a new iPad at an Apple store in Seoul, South Korea. In Google's 12th annual roundup of global trending searches, the iPad 3 was ranked fourth. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

* Jeremy Lin, the undrafted NBA star who exploded off the New York Knicks bench and sparked a wave of "Linsanity";

* Morgan Freeman, the actor whose untimely death turned out not to be true.

Yahoo said its top-searched memes for the year included "Kony 2012," a reference to the short film and campaign against Ugandan militia leader Joseph Kony; "stingray photobomb" for an unusual vacation snapshot that went viral; and "binders full of women," a nod to Mitt Romney for his awkward description of his search for women cabinet members as Massachusetts governor.

Ask.com said the top trending news question was related the 2012 Olympics: "How many medals did the U.S. gymnastics team win?" Other top queries on Ask.com included "When is the Facebook IPO?" and "Why was Trayvon Martin shot?"

And people were happy to pass on popular Twitter posts by retweeting them. According to Twitter, the year's most popular retweets were President Barack Obama's "Four more years," and Justin Bieber's farewell to six-year-old fan Avalanna Routh, who died of a rare form of brain cancer: "RIP Avalanna. I love you".