Google owns the search market. This is well known and is why the firm releasing information on the most searched for terms is an annual event that provides the best snap-shot into what occupied the world's attention in a given year.

As it turns out it is mainly celebrities, which is not surprising really. Yet Sneak was surprised to discover that in Blighty, the fifth most searched for term on Google was 'Google'.

Aside from the dangers of destroying the internet by Googling Google, is it not a bit odd that so many people are searching for the very thing they are already using?

Sure, there must be some legitimate reasons to Google the firm itself, but Sneak suspects there's something amiss here.

What could well be happening is not-too-smart internet users are searching for Google from the corner search boxes provided on browsers such as Firefox, not realising that it is Google.

What is worse, though, is that the world's most popular sites are the most popular searches too, including Facebook in number one, YouTube in two, the BBC in six and Amazon in seven, which is odd if you think about.

All of these sites have some of the most recognisable URLs on the planet and it is highly likely that most people will have the address stored in their URL search bar on their browsers and so could just go there direct with a few keystrokes.

Or, better yet, use the handy bookmarks tool bar function (best served in Firefox) to create a nifty list of your favourite sites so you don't have to clog up what would be an otherwise interesting list with searches that make the UK look like a nation of morons.

In another example of the dangers posed by the online world, the YouTube channel of kids TV show Sesame Street was hacked at the weekend and videos of muppets replaced by hardcore porn.

Sneak is not sure whether the porn videos in question had a Sesame Street theme, although they do add a rather sinister edge to the show's theme tune and its immortal lyrics: "Come and play, everything's A OK. Friendly neighbours there that's where we meet...Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street."

The videos were available to view for some 20 minutes or so before YouTube suspended the channel for violating its guidelines.

Although credit must go to the YouTube team for acting so quickly, this represents another cautionary tale for content owners to make sure their password security is water-tight.

The destroyers of childhood innocence, or hackers, left a message on the Sesame Street YouTube channel profile arguing, "Who doesn't love porn kids?".

They urged this invisible army of porn hungry six-year-olds not to "let Sesame Street get this account back", arguing that they would "make all the America happy!".

Well, either happy or very, very disappointed.

As for the hackers, where next? Maybe they could expand their horizons to other kids TV channels. He-Man was half way there anyway, while Noggin the Nog could do with a re-working for the 21st century, Sneak thinks. What do you think kids?

The bookish geeks at the Oxford English Dictionary have announced that 'retweet' and 'sexting', words casually bandied about on Twitter and mobile phones, are now so common as to be worthy of a place in the hallowed book.

Sneak is pleased to see this, although while he was aware that 'retweet' means repeating someone's message on Twitter, he wasn't quite so au fait with the term 'sexting' until he undertook some horrific Google searches to arrive at his own definition:

"Sexting [verb] pronounced: sex-ting. The act of electronically distributing pictures of ones intimate areas to a potential mate via the medium of mobile or electronic communications. Usually undertaken by 11-14 year-old chavs or US politicians. Used in a sentence: Rob and Sandra fell in love after sexting one another on their iPhones."

It's not a huge surprise that these terms have made it into the OED as the growth of mobile communications and social networks has given rise to a wealth of jargon such as '@reply' and 'follow Friday' on Twitter, and 'poke' and 'like' on Facebook.

Other notable entries into the OED were 'auto-correct', 'cyberbullying' and 'woot'.

Another benefit of this, aside from enriching the glorious English language, is a few new words for Scrabble games with the family. Lol!

It's certainly been a struggle for Google in the social networking space of late.

First its Orkut service failed to set the world on fire, unless you live in South America, then there was the ill-advised Buzz launch, which ended up causing more bad headlines for the company as privacy lawsuits flooded in from angry customers.

Things appeared to have gained a little momentum after co-founder Larry Page took the reins as chief executive in April, restructuring the search firm and apparently linking 25 per cent of staff bonuses to Google's performance in social media.

Now, just when the dust seems to have settled on Google's latest attempt to grapple some market share from the cold, blue hands of undisputed leader Facebook, Page's nemesis has struck back.

Yes, in a cruel twist of fate, according to Google's own stats ranking the top 100 most popular users of its new, and generally well-regarded, social networking service Google+, guess who comes in at number one? Yup, Mark Zuckerberg.

Page himself comes a fairly distant second, while Google SVP of social Vic Gundotra is in third place and co-founder Sergey Brin is fourth, but it is the Facebook supremo who sits proudly atop the pile with 21,213 followers and counting.

Sneak can only imagine what percentage of Google staff bonuses will be linked to getting him off the top spot should the rankings stay as they are for much longer.

Google may have lost the Nortel auction patent battle with Apple, Microsoft, RIM and a host of other tech firms, but Sneak can't help applauding the way the search firm went about the bidding process, demonstrating its corporate personality as smart, funny and creative.

According to sources who talked to Reuters, all of Google's bids during the auction for some 9,000 odd patents referred to famous mathematical numbers.

The company bid $1,902,160,540 and $2,614,972,128 during the early round, which maths wizzes may recognise as Brun's constant and the Meissel-Mertens constant. Once bidding passed $3bn, Google offered $3,141,592.65, representing the first nine digits of Pi.

The eventual winning bid was $4.5bn at which point Google dropped out, which is strange as it could have bid $6.66bn to really confuse those who argue that the company has lost its way from the 'Don't Be Evil' mantra.

Other companies involved in the bidding were apparently utterly confused by the bids coming from Google, and the source told Reuters that the company was "either supremely confident or bored".

However, Google has a track record of these kinds of shenanigans. When the firm went public in 2004 it looked to raise $2,718,281,828, the value of e multiplied by a billion. Sneak doesn't know what this means, but it sounds jolly smart.

Other details emerged from the source, including the fact that Apple named its consortium Rockstar and went by the name Ranger, which sound like team names made up by the wallies that appear on The Apprentice.