“Calculated in number of Google searches, Minecraft briefly surpassed Jesus in popularity in early 2011.”
— Minecraft, Second Edition: The Unlikely Tale of Markus "Notch" Persson and the Game That Changed Everything by Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson, translated by Jennifer Hawkins, 2015. Page 141

Four thousand per second

“At that moment, a technician behind the stage tells us, four thousand people are logging in to play Minecraft. Four thousand per second, that is.”
— Description of the launch party for Minecraft 1.0, from  Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus “Notch” Persson and the Game That Changed Everything.