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How did people negotiate 2017, which was, if anything, a year of endless calamities? Some were natural disasters: hurricanes, wildfires, volcano eruptions. Others were man-made: Donald Trump, North Korea, the refugee crisis, mass shootings, terror attacks.

The Google gestalt, which traditionally reveals the most searched terms of the year, tries to answer that question in an imaginative video. Google’s answer: people responded to the crises by constantly asking “How...?”

But as the data revealed in the video shows, what all of us looked for was advice on how to act in the face of such events. How to protest, how to help, how to lend support. So, along with the fear and panic, there was humanity and compassion.