Tracey Nearmy / AAP / EPA file

South Korean pop artist Psy poses for photographs in Sydney, Australia in October 2012.

"I get tired or I get sick of it," Psy said of "Gangnam Style" during a news conference in Singapore in December. However the South Korean sensation feels about his infectious song and dance, there's certainly one thing that he can't complain about: Cold, hard cash.

We've previously heard third-party estimates suggesting that the "Gangnam Style" YouTube video may have generated over $8.1 million in advertising deals, but now Google itself is calling attention to this statistic.

"Outside estimates say that ... that video — which I am sure all of you have seen — of Psy, his hit song, 'Gangnam Style,' now the most watched YouTube video for all times," Google senior vice president and chief business officer Nikesh Arora explained during the company's quarterly earnings call on Tuesday. "It generated over $8 million in … all in advertising deals."

Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-Sang, has seen some significant success beyond YouTube-related profits. In late December, "Gangnam Style" became the first YouTube video to get one billion views, beating Justin Bieber's "Baby," the second most popular video on YouTube, by a wide margin. YouTube trends manager Kevin Allocca praised the video's popularity in a post on the official YouTube blog, pointing out that it has been viewed in "close to 75 countries, making it one of the most global music sensations ever." Additionally, as of late December, fan tributes to the video were being viewed 20 million times every single day.

Considering that the phrase "Gangnam Style" finished 2012 as YouTube's top rising search query, odds are that Psy's success will continue on the video sharing site for  a while longer — even if he declared that 2013 will include less of that song.

Might as well learn that dance right now if you haven't already.

Related stories:

• In 2012, you asked Google 'what is love?' and searched for 'funny pictures'
• Facebook in 2012: A year of 'Hunger Games' and 'Duck Dynasty', TBH
• 'Gangnam Style,' Kony, 'Call Me Maybe' lead YouTube's top 10 of 2012

Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

Google

Google honors painter Bob Ross by featuring him on its search page. Oct. 29 was his birthday, and he would have been 70 this year.

Soft-spoken painter Bob Ross is honored Monday in a Google doodle that celebrates his life and the encouragement he gave to so many in his PBS show, "The Joy of Painting," on TV for more than a decade. Monday, Oct. 29 would have been his 70th birthday.

Ross taught us not only about painting, but his encouraging, calming and reassuring approach pushed even the most reticent of viewers to pick up a paintbrush or piece of wood or any tool to use to paint. The show aired from 1983 to 1994. It could have gone longer, but Ross was battling lymphoma, and canceled the show to deal with the illness. He died on July 4, 1995.

The painter with the large hair and large heart had a pretty simple philosophy: that the ability to paint comes from the heart, and if you have one, you, too, can do it.

His work included landscapes — trees, clouds, mountains, lakes — and the oil painting technique he used is known as "wet on wet." The painter keeps adding painting on top of paint that is still wet instead of letting each layer of paint dry.

But it really wasn't so much his technique of painting that connected with viewers; it was the emotion he conveyed about it. When he showed viewers how to paint trees, they weren't just trees, they were "happy little trees." Clouds weren't just clouds, they were "happy little clouds." Painting, he once said, let him "create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it."

You can see some archived Bob Ross shows on YouTube. And if you want to see previous Google Doodles, here's a sortable archive of all of them. But first, take a moment to enjoy this remix of Ross's show, lovingly presented by PBS:

 More stories from Digital Life:

• Gadgets and apps that'll help you deal with Hurricane Sandy
• 'Little Nemo' gets honored with charming interactive Google doodle
• 'Gangnam Style' (and spoofs) hit 1.2 billion views
• Top 10 ways to deal with the Internet's biggest morons

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

Watch out, Batman! "The Dark Knight Rises" villain Bane is this year's most popular costume, according to Google's search results.

Archers are also having a happy Halloween: Katniss from "The Hunger Games," Merida from "Brave" and Hawkeye from "The Avengers" ranked second, eighth and ninth in the Internet giant's list, respectively.

See the full list below, and tell us: What will you be this Halloween? 

More on TODAY.com:
'Loofah,' 'Slender Man' among top DIY costume searches
Bobbie's buzz: DIY costume ideas 
Complete Halloween Guide: Costumes, candy, more 

Google

Heads up nerds, you need to click around Google's very special 46th anniversary of "Star Trek: The Original Series" if you desire the full interactive experience.

Spelling out the search giant's name on Friday are science officer/first officer Spock (as "G"), communications officer Lt. Nyota Uhura (as o-1), Captain James Tiberius Kirk (as ungirdled second "o" — you know Bill Shatner would've strapped down that roundness back in the day), Dr. "Dammit, Jim I'm a doctor, not a lowercase g" Leonard H. McCoy (aka "Bones" as "lowercase g"), Lt. Hikaru Sulu (as "lowercase l," a role that is sure to hilariously enrage the delightful and frequent Star-Trek-bellyacher George Takei) and the usually expendable "redshirt" as "lowercase e."

And yet, whither engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, or Yeoman Janice Rand, she of the basket-weave bouffant, known for such memorable scenes as "needing help," "in distress" and "standing in the background, eyeballing Capt. Kirk like he's a freshly replicated ham sandwich?"

Also, Chekov?

Surely Google had it within its bottomless budget (unlike ST:TOS) to "break the laws of physics" — and give the search engine a few more "o's" so that everyone's adequately honored.

But don't let the ginormous oversight — or the fact that the klaxons sound when the turbolift doors open — keep you from clicking around the bridge of the starship Enterprise. For what is anything Star Trek-related but a reason to pick apart something mercilessly?

Poke around, and you'll be amply rewarded with, among other surprises — SPOILER ALERT — the famous, completely plausible giant diamond bazooka scene from "Arena," in which Capt. Kirk totally nails an l-shaped, armless Gorn, which resembles a Pez dispenser, but in all fairness, still looks more realistic than the original lizardly nemesis.

Update: We could only make this interactive doodle work in Chrome when Google posted it Friday, but since then, we've found it works in other browsers. And keep an eye out for tribbles!

More Digital Life:

• People's choice for 'Best Cat Video' is French, existential
• Etsy 'sweatshops' exposed in hilarious new video
• Mark Zuckerberg no longer killing what he eats

Ree Hines goes blah blah blah about TV and other pop culture stuff on TODAY Entertainment. Follow her on Twitter for your daily overdose of esoteric pop culture references.  Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet on NBCNews, too. Join her, won't you on Twitter and/or Facebook. Also, Google+.  (Both of them are complete Sci-Fi losers like you wouldn't believe.)

Britney Spears is now the "most followed" person on Google+, eclipsing Google CEO Larry Page on the still-relatively young social network.

The pop star's page showed 739,469 followers as of Wednesday morning; Page wasn't far behind at 739,393. As numbers change every second, so could Spears' status on G+.

But as a reflection of Google+'s growth, back in July when it was very newbie, the most followed person on G+ was ... Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who had nearly 30,000 followers then.

Who else is hot on G+? Google+ Statistics can tell you:

Yup, after Spears and Page, it's Snoop Dog, Zuckerberg, Tyra Banks, and then Paris Hilton, Jessi June, Google's Sergey Brin, Richard Branson and Google senior v-p of engineering Vic Gundotra round out the top 10.

Before we make too much of the Google+ figures, SearchEngineLand points out that the network "still has a long way to go. At less than 1 million followers, Spears is well behind the 11 million who follow her on Twitter and the 15 million who follow her on Facebook."

Still, give Spears a hand: She's done it again. At least for the moment.

Related stories:

• Google+ has third biggest week since start
• Mark Zuckerberg is the most popular person on Google+
• Larry Page: Google+ has 40 million users
• Google+ opens up, traffic rockets 1,200+ percent

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.