One minute we’re babbling on about all the good that Google can could do with their power these days, then a quick search of the BBC’s technology news today revealed that Google searching can actually be bad for you, or rather for the environment:
As we say in Glasgow, ‘you just cannae win’.
Scary stuff. It seems the bright young things at Google might be better at predicting how healthy (or not) we (or at least our pals in the US) may be at any point in time. How? Well read this and it all sounds very simple.
According to Google they can accurately predict how significant or not a breakout of flu will be by looking at the number of people searching flu-related terms via Google.com. Then Google can accurately estimate current flu levels one to two weeks faster than any other professional report.
I’d like to think that this was just a nice, helpful thing for Google to do for the greater good but no doubt it’s the kind of time-critical information the Marketing people for Lemsip, Beechams and the like would be willing to pay top dollar for.
