What is Google Trends

Citizens' interactions are at the center of open governments. When the latter use open structures and open processes to foster (technical) collaboration, citizens' wellbeing can be improved by observing what citizens (do not) publicly write about or search for. This chapter tries to compare the wellbeing and quality of life (the older terms are public value or solidarity) with public goods inside and outside of public services. This relationship can be achieved when people debate and governments listen to diverse alternatives. To test this relationship, the Google Trends application was used. Trends show that satisfied people do not write about effective, efficient, legal, and ethical things, so a temporary conclusion needed for further investigation is that the government's success in a certain field is present when people do not talk (on a large scale) about matters or topics in that field. Governments should, therefore, listen to or read what people (do not) say or write.