Google - Flu Trends

I thought this was pretty interesting. Google is using search results to track the progress of the flu!

http://www.google.org/flutrends/

For more information, the New York Times has a nice article. Here’s an excerpt:

“Tests of the new Web tool from Google.org, the company’s philanthropic unit, suggest that it may be able to detect regional outbreaks of the flu a week to 10 days before they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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“This seems like a really clever way of using data that is created unintentionally by the users of Google to see patterns in the world that would otherwise be invisible,” said Thomas W. Malone, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. “I think we are just scratching the surface of what’s possible with collective intelligence.”