http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?sa=X&date=2008-7-10

   1. rohm and haas
   2. jesse jackson
>> 3. 卐
   4. monarch butterfly biosphere reserve
   5. sc education lottery

I'd venture to guess that someone somewhere in the blogosphere worked out that this could be done, posted about it, then all their readers tried it, some of them posted about it, and the whole thing just exploded.

And now, thanks to this blog, there will be even more people searching for it, trying to work out why this is a trend.

Somebody posted the html code for this on 4chan's /b/ board this morning => thousand of people googled it.

Yes, that's it.

PS: This was not a supposition, I was there and saw it.

Christophe, thanks for the info! Do you have a link to the board page?

Philipp, http:// img.4chan.org/b/

The thread is (of course) gone. No thread last more than 1 hour on /b/

[NSFW link edited – Tony]

aaaand I forgot to mention for those who don't know: THIS IS HIGHLY NSFW

The Nazi swastika is left-handed, and different from the right-handed swastika seen here.

Aren't you sure that this page wasn't made by a simple javascript code that allow to modify the display of a webpage ?

this one ::

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

there are chinese newspaper articles about the use of that symbol and buddism. i think , it's more like a coincidence...

Added an update now...

> The Nazi swastika is left-handed, and different from
> the right-handed swastika seen here.

Not sure what you mean, but the Unicode symbol in question has the same direction as the one used by the Nazis (though the version by the Nazis is tilted):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

That is really crazy.

It really depends which way the Swastika wheel is turning that makes it a Swastika.

Robert, perhaps I misunderstand you but no, the symbol in question can be turning clockwise or counterclockwise – it's both still a swastika:

<<The swastika (from Sanskrit: svástika स्वस्तिक) is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing (卐) form or its mirrored left-facing (卍) form.>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

<<Swastika ... An ancient cosmic or religious symbol formed by a Greek cross with the ends of the arms bent at right angles in either a clockwise or a counterclockwise direction.>>
http://www.answers.com/swastika&r=67

But as I mentioned above, the Nazi swastika version in the flag is tilted (and clockwise), not straight up as in that discussed Unicode symbol.

Philipp Lensson
In Chinese, this ICON is also a Chinese word means integrated all & any & every "Lucky", "excellence", "virtue", "Money", "Food"...right angles and left angles all accepted.

45 degree tilted also used on the center of the building, windows, door, ect.

After 1945, this symbol forbid on official, but in the folk, still use it for marry, born, gather...

Below is a kind of 卐:

zuosa.com/photo/mms/00/00/4B/00119230.jpg

Below is a building AD on the wall.

http://zuosa.com/photo/mms/00/00/4B/11219231.jpg

Hong Xiaowan --

Thank you very much for the information on what the symbol means in China and how it's used (interesting about it being banned but still used).

K

卐 banned on official, Gov have too many troubles to settle, nobody managed this.

It is so lucky for you, Can you think if hitler used "G" for his party, Google will not exist now. Or should be called Coocle, or Kookle,

No,

Do you find something, when western considering something, disregard China simply...

卐 was not evil, it was just a letter once selected by hitler...

[original nickname: "Swastika is an ancient Religious Symbol"]

How about making people aware of the original meaning of the symbol rather then the ill fated current meaning of the swastika symbol? Why is it so strongly associated with Hitler only?

Isn't it surprising that the original meaning of the traditional religious symbol is not referred to in discussions?

The moment we see it , the first response is to take it down!

It is just a sorry historic fact that Hitler hijacked the peaceful symbol and it became something to hate, despise and fear. The original peaceful and good meanings behind has been ignored.

Don't associate an ancient religious symbol with its limited vision start banning it use and robbing its of it original dignity.

Care to read more about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika ?

Anonymous: the same link you mentioned, and the other associations you mention, were already posted in the article associated with this forum thread. Perhaps you visited the forum thread directly from elsewhere – the original article is linked to above.

I now added an update with an official explanation from Google.

No one knows the old religious meaning because the sign is forbidden in the most western country. It just visible in relation to education about the nazis in the western world.

It was once peaceful. than the Nazis turned up and condemned it forever.

I can better live without the Swastika, than giving a powerful instrument of propaganda to fascists. All the fascists of our time, would abuse it to spread their rubbish

  

The sad thing is, they did not only taint the Swastika, but also most of the nordic culture. Valhalla and the Asgard? Runes? Being a patriot in the USA, France or Great-Britain makes you a patriot. Being a patriot in Germany makes you one step short of being a "Nazi".

May their souls be damned forever.

Or from
http://www.drudgereport.com/gt.jpg

[Name corrected – Tony]

Maybe its because theres a story in the news about a mother who sent her kids to school with swastikas drawn on their arms. I came across it in http://detentionslip.org .

This is too much:
http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/1353/fuckyougooglenh1.png

http://wtf.microsiervos.com/matrix/fuck-you-google.html
http://www.revfad.com/flip.html

Above also by 4chan member

What's with Google Checkout Trends anyway? Can't seem to access it for the last couple of days.
http://checkout.google.com/trends/

*Google Trends Hijacking*

Is it a joke, Ionut & Hebbet ? I can't find it in Google Trends

OK it has been removed by Google, at first sight.
Cache version here http://www.teoriza.com/cache/840

Added another update...

Now that's really out of hand.

To get the upside down trick for ANY text go to this website: http://www.revfad.com/flip.html and enter the sentence or text you want to flip, then hit flip. Copy the contents and paste them wherever you want.

The site works by finding letters in a computers font system that resemble what the text would look like upside down. Your Windows character map can be a fun place to find neat and often unused symbols. For instance all of these characters are installed with Windows ♂ ♀ ∞ ω ₪ ‡ ۝۩ ۞ ☺ ☻ ♀ ☼ ♂ ♣ ♥ ♠ ♦ ♫ . Now if enough people searched for the male or female symbol in Google – it would show up as one of the top searches for that week. Take into consideration that 4chan has the 5th highest web traffic (according to Alexia) in the US and you can easily skew Google's search data.

> Now if enough people searched for the male or female
> symbol in Google – it would show up as one of the top
> searches for that week

I'm not sure that's necessarily so... because Google may not treat all characters the same. For instance, I can find zero results for the yin-yang symbol when searching for it even though I know there are sites out there with the yin-yang symbol which Google indexed (I also can't find any result for "♀"). The swastika on the other hand *can* be found.

I guess there's a difference between actual letters and other characters that are actually used by various languages and symbols / special characters that don't belong to any particular language.

http://xn--zkr.com/ shows swastika dot com!