Python surpasses Perl in TIOBE index

[Roy Smith]

In article <mailman.1928.1196833569.13605.python-list at python.org>,
 "Daniel Fetchinson" <fetchinson at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Anyone has an idea what the huge peak around the middle of 2004 can be
> attributed to?

There's a Q/A section at the bottom of 
http://www.tiobe.com/index.htm?tiobe_index which covers this:

Q: What happened to Java in April 2004? Did you change your methodology?
A: No, we did not change our methodology at that time. Google changed its 
methodology. They performed a general sweep action to get rid of all kinds 
of web sites that had been pushed up. As a consequence, there was a huge 
drop for languages such as Java and C++. In order to minimize such 
fluctuations in the future, we added two more search engines (MSN and 
Yahoo) a few months after this incident.