Google Earth had a tremendous year in 2011. Our most popular story of the year, by far, was from people searching for Osama bin Laden's compound in May. There was also quite a bit of interest in resources for the Japanese earthquake, as Google Earth is an excellent platform to share imagery and information for an event like that.
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2011/12/the_year_2011_in_google_earth.html
