Caliente!

Google Hot Trends! Google can play with those other kids with their cool data visualizations and neat infoporn.

Except Google's definition of 'play' is to use pretty much the same application template they use for almost everything from Sitemaps to AdSense. Do people want to browse this type of casual information in the same way that they want to track their portfolios? Seems unlikely.

At least Google's conflation of 'simple' and 'staid' results in some unintended humor. The one element that breaks with the standard design is the 'Hotness' meter for each term. Somehow, the Trends folks got away with naming their Hotness levels: Mild, Medium, Spicy, On Fire and Volcanic. Which is pretty out there by Google standards.

Unfortunately, it also results in visuals like the following:



The fact that this is the only playful element on the entire page, makes the labeling seem that much more absurd.