Harrison 
Posted by Google for developers
This month, Google Search turns 25 years old. While much has changed in the field of development over the past quarter century, one thing remains the same. Whether it’s getting stuck on a problem, reading documentation, or learning something new. Whether you’re researching technology or finding the best technology stack for your project, search is a tool that can help you get answers to your questions.
What you search for provides strong signals about developer trends across web, mobile, cloud, and AI over the years. Let’s take a look at some of the interesting things you looked into*. There are also some interesting queries. Because everyone likes a good retrospective.
*Note: Google Trends data goes back to 2004.
Building a better web
After the Internet dot-com bubble burst in 2000-2001, the web continued to advance and the Internet exploded in popularity. Web development responded by allowing designers to incorporate multimedia into her web pages. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) (released in 1997) and Flash video (1996-2017) changed the way web pages looked and navigated, and streaming changed the way people watched video. However, the basic interface and structure of the web page remains the same. As different browsers came on the market, JavaScript frameworks and libraries emerged because they can be done anywhere using both CSS and HTML. All these changes led to some fun searches.
How to center a div
Web development is unimaginable without CSS. And it turns out that “how to center a div” has been searched since the beginning. It has also provided the internet with a wealth of memes over the years.
JavaScript library
JavaScript is a front-end programming language used to add interactivity and dynamic behavior to web pages. It is one of the most popular programming languages in the world and is essential for building modern web applications. But at some point, most developers have to ask themselves what kind of JavaScript they should use. vanilla? Basic concept? library?
Searches for jQuery have increased since 2007, peaked in 2013, and then started to decline. Meanwhile, developers started showing more interest in React and Angular around the same time as jQuery’s peak. By April 2018, they all had similar search volumes, and React soon took over, followed by Angular. Nigeria searched for React the most, while Japan preferred jQuery and Ecuador preferred Angular. Choosing a JavaScript framework has been the subject of a lot of controversy lately. Which is your favorite? Let us know what you think.
The rise of mobile
As the web has evolved, so has mobile. Phones have gone from cellular to smart. The app economy has blossomed. Many emerging markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have skipped the desktop era in favor of mobile for information and entertainment due to lack of infrastructure and financial constraints. In response, mobile development, especially Android, really took off.
Android development
Starting in 2007, Android was released as a developer platform before devices hit the market, with the first Android Developer Challenge launched to support and recognize developers building great applications. In 2008, the Android OS was released and open sourced, and his G1 from T-Mobile became his first smartphone to run Android. In the same year, Android Market was released, allowing developers to easily distribute apps to his Android community. In 2012, the marketplace was rebranded to Google Play. This momentum fueled the frenzy, but it wasn’t until 2012 that the search really started.
mobile geddon
Even web developers couldn’t escape the importance of mobile in their heyday. By 2010, “mobile first” and “responsive design” became his web best practices to support mobile traffic. By 2015, in response to clear signs that mobile wasn’t going anywhere, Google’s search ranking algorithm changed to prioritize mobile-friendly content. In a post on Search Engine Watch, he describes the term, which Chuck Price dubbed “Mobilegeddon,” as developers immediately search for the term and adjust best practices like responsive and mobile-first design. did. By 2017, mobile traffic accounted for about half of the world’s web traffic, and in 2020 it permanently surpassed it.
Migration to the cloud
Over the past 25 years, cloud development has evolved from a niche technology to a mainstream solution for organizations of all sizes. Freedom from managing infrastructure and operations provides many benefits, including cost savings, speed, and scalability. In its early days, it was primarily used to host static websites and applications. However, as the technology has matured, it has become more prevalent in a wide range of applications such as IoT, big data, real-time data, and ML, along with modern development methodologies such as containers, microservices, and security.
cloud computing
As development modernizes, developers, IT, and operations personnel quickly realize that managing infrastructure and servers is painful and expensive. In response, many cloud environment providers, including Google Cloud Platform, were launched between his 2002 and 2010 years.
cloud database
Cloud services extend to storage, databases, and more, becoming essential as the technology becomes more robust and supports large amounts of data in real time from IoT devices and use cases like ML and large-scale language models. It becomes. Searches for the term “cloud database” date back to his 2004, but exploded in 2017, coinciding with Google Cloud’s Cloud Spanner. And with the resurgence of modern AI technology, this search term will very likely continue to grow in the coming months and years.
current innovations
Today’s development incorporates disruptive developer technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. From AI-assisted coding to problem-solving with big data, AI is permeating our lives. So it’s no wonder developers search for some important terms.
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc.
While some applications of AI, ML, deep learning, and large-scale language models (LLM) are new, most of the terminology is not. Even in 2004, AI and ML were hot search terms. In 2015, most of these terms started to recover and continued to show an upward trend, and in 2022, interest increased sharply. In the same year, “generative AI” was officially introduced to the world. Python is the most searched coding language, closely related to AI, and finally surpassed Java as the most searched for in 2019.
Looking to the future
While some aspects of development are gradually becoming cleaner, more modern, and more lightweight, there are more choices and more complexity when it comes to technology stacks. So it’s no wonder that questions like “Why doesn’t my code work?” proliferated both in the early days and today. At Google, we’re committed to streamlining and simplifying technology so you can build smarter and ship faster with new technologies like Project IDX, Android Studio Bots, and Coding for Bard. Masu.
Whether you’re trying to solve a specific problem, learning a new skill or best practice, considering what technology you want to use, or dreaming up your next big idea. It’s inspiring to see how you got answers to your questions. I look forward to seeing what his next 25 years bring.
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