Argentina forward number 10 Lionel Messi kicks the ball during the Qatar 2022 World Cup soccer final between Argentina and France at Lusail Stadium in Lusail, north of Doha, on December 18, 2022.
Kirill Kudryavtsev | AFP | Getty Images
alphabetGoogle, owned by , broke search records thanks to the World Cup international soccer tournament.
During the World Cup finals on Tuesday, Argentina’s national team launched a late fightback, with Cristian Romero scoring and Lionel Messi equalizing with an own goal in the 83rd minute to win.
“Google Search broke all previous usage records, reaching its highest usage rate ever right after Argentina scored the winning goal in yesterday’s game,” Nick Fox, Google’s head of knowledge and information, wrote on Wednesday.
A company spokesperson did not provide specific numbers, but told CNBC that “the most queries per second occurred immediately after the winning goal.”
The milestone comes as the company seeks to prove that traditional search engines can remain relevant even in an AI era where chatbots become more prevalent. Google still controls 90% of the search market, its stock price has more than doubled in the past year, and its first quarter revenue growth was the fastest since 2022.
Google announced that the most searched query after the match was “Argentina vs. Egypt.”
Globally, we also saw searches for things like “Argentina x Colombia” and “Messi’s World Cup goals”. Additional questions included “What do you call it when a player bumps into another player during a match?” and “Will this be Messi’s last World Cup?”
