While Anne Hathaway came in from behind at the tail of 2012 to snag a lot of search results courtesy of forgetting her undergarments, seems most of our Google queries this year consisted mostly of pop stars and a prince's wife.

According to Google Zeitgeist -- pretty much the homecoming court of searches -- Whitney Houston's death, one of the biggest and most tragic stories of 2012, led not just overall searches, but searches for specific people.

Why? Because we're nosy. And more than a little morbid.

Close behind is the pretty but pretty much useless Kate Middleton, now known as the Duchess Catherine of Cambridge. From her massive, over-televised wedding to Prince William in the spring to her sister's overrated behind to her own pregnancy (and the subsequent suicide of a nurse following an innocent radio prank), Middleton took the palace and our imaginations by storm, despite not really being all that interesting. But hey, she looks awesome in blue! So there's that.

The newcomers that took our search histories hostage? One Direction. The cutely-coiffed harmonizers went from runners-up on the UK version of 'X Factor' (is it as terrible as ours?) to the most famous boy band on the planet.

1D even beat out Justin Bieber in all categories, including people, images and overall searches, half of which were probably from stage-five Harry Styles clinger Taylor Swift (who didn't make the top 10 in any of those categories).

Is the Canadian phenom closing in on his expiration date in favor of some fresher meat? According to Google, yes. According to Bing, maybe not. Which might prove Google users are smarter than Bing users.

Anyway, here's the list of the most searched celebrities on Google:

  1. One Direction
  2. Justin Bieber
  3. Selena Gomez
  4. Whitney Houston
  5. Kim Kardashian
  6. Nicki Minaj
  7. Kristen Stewart
  8. Miley Cyrus
  9. Katy Perry
  10. Kate Middleton

And here's the list of the most popular image searches:

  1. One Direction
  2. Selena Gomez
  3. iPhone 5
  4. Megan Fox
  5. Rihanna
  6. Justin Bieber
  7. Harry Styles
  8. Minecraft
  9. Nicki Minaj
  10. Katy Perry

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