What is every country searching for in tech? 9 languages, 8 countries, a decade of data

Using real Google Trends data, we mapped what eight major countries are searching for in programming — across a full decade (2016–2025). Here’s the interactive version, where you can switch countries and time ranges 👇

▶ What every country searches in tech (interactive)

A few things we found

• Python has run away with it. It’s the #1 searched language in all eight countries, takes roughly a third of all top-language search, and surged during the pandemic (peaking in early 2022).
• Java is the fading incumbent. On top in 2016 (index 100 in India), now in the 30s–40s. Python overtook it at different moments — the UK first (2016), and India last (2022).
• Japan is the outlier. It’s the only country where Python search is shrinking over the last five years.
• Searched ≠ used. TypeScript is near the bottom in search, yet it just became the #1 language on GitHub (Octoverse 2025). Search tracks who’s learning, not who’s already shipping.
• Each ranking is a fingerprint of the country’s industry. The US leans on Go (cloud), Germany on Rust/C++ (automotive), Japan on C# (games).

About the data

Figures are Google Trends search interest (each language queried as its “Programming language” topic, monthly, per country, 2016–2025). Trends normalizes within each country, so we compare shapes, ranks, shares and 5-year change rather than absolute levels. Cross-checked against PYPL, Stack Overflow, GitHub Octoverse and Crunchbase. Data through: December 2025.

We build interactive data products like this — dashboards, analytics, and visualizations. If you’d like something like this built from your own data, get in touch.