Google – The early warning system

An interesting deviation from Google Trends is turning out to be an early warning system for Flu outbreaks. When millions of people start searching for “Flu symptoms” this collective data results in an accurate regional picture of impending flu outbreak, so much so that early tests by Googles philanthropic unit Google.org suggest being able to detect outbreaks up to 10 days before they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Data collected this way can help forecast the imminent future, and reflects the world’s collective desires and needs, its likes and dislikes. A spike in “repossession” may signal an increase in the numbers of people not able to pay their mortgages. “Retrenchment law” an indication that companies are in trouble and are considering redundancies.

Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist was quoted saying that “Most forecasting is basically trend extrapolation,” and that turning points are typically hard to pinpoint. Google data may give a very accurate picture of the market sentiment. However as with most things these days, privacy concerns are already being raised, and are a concern with sharing this data with the world.

Its new service is available at google.org/flutrends analyzes the flu related searches as they come in, creating graphs and maps of the country that, ideally, will show where the flu is spreading. At the moment however this only covers the United States, but Google is hoping to eventually use the same technology to help track influenza and other diseases worldwide.