
Google Uses Web Searches to Track Flu’s Spread - peter123
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/technology/internet/12flu.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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tocomment
There must be so many innovative uses of real time search data. I can't
imagine what people would come up with if they opened it up. I suppose there
are some privacy issues to work out of course.

I wonder if companies with that kind of data are ever tempted by insider
trading? For example, imagine if you saw all kinds of job searches coming out
of IP addresses known to belong to say GM. You'd get a head start on shorting
the stock.

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unalone
The only problem, as was demonstrated with the AOL fiasco, is that many people
use their searches to target themselves. It's very easy to track some
percentage of the world's population down by looking at their search history.

That and if opening search data became known, people would suddenly start
restraining their searches. And caution's something I'd rather not have enter
the search process.

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seiji
Larry Brilliant (google.org director) has been interested in using online data
gathering for predicting and containing outbreaks for a while.

Mining google search queries is a step up from Brilliant's previously
advocated method of automatically correlating reports of illness from news
outlets around the world.

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_brilliant_wants_to_...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_brilliant_wants_to_stop_pandemics.html)

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tectonic
This is very smart. Other things to monitor in real time: allergies, weird
disease symptoms, SAD and other mental symptoms, flooding?, crime.

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auntjemima
It's too bad that "flu" is often used for many things besides influenza, most
notably the stomach flu which usually lasts 24 hours. That's way more common
than influenza. I run across a lot of people that even think the "flu shot" is
for those kinds of flus...

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litewulf
A concrete example of why its not always terrible to have logs data sitting
around.

