UberPhipps

So google.org (the charitable portion of the huge billion dollar company) has been using the power of information and technology (all those hard drives…we are in the petabyte age) to address different global problems.  Google processes over a petabyte of information every 72 hours…it’s really about time they started putting all this information to use for the rest of us (and not for reasons of profiet either).

So yeah…evidently they can track flu outbreaks better than the CDC.  By correlating past flu outbreaks with “key” search terms (both in terms of IP location and search relevance) google is now able to predict flu outbreaks up to 2 weeks faster then the CDC.  This will result in vaccinations getting to key locations faster with better results.  This makes me happy.

Hopefully more ingenious tools like this are created (I know they are starting some data aggregation for clean energy…so we shall see)

I guess my only concern (as well as other people’s) is that google will be aggregating search results of just about everything for what ever they deem is appropriate and the idea of freedom while searching really won’t happen anymore.  What happens when certain people get flagged or quarantined by the government because of a certain aggregated search results of a community given to the government from google?

hmm.  It’s still pretty cool..as long as google doesn’t go all evil on us.