Briefs

Google can do many amazing things, but it's a terrible guide to the future.

By Anders Bylund, MSNBC, Tues., Sept . 8, 2009

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is such a nice and helpful young company. The search giant is now letting us peek into years of collected search history to see if trends in search terms could help us predict the economy.

Google Finance just gained a set of unique indices, ranging from "jobs" and "unemployment" to "luxury goods" and "computers & electronics." Unlike your run-of-the-mill index like the Dow Jones Industrial Average or S&P 500, these trackers have nothing to do with stock performance. Instead, they track how many searches Google received over time, organized into little compartments.

The Automotive index, for example, tracks search terms like "cars," Ford (NYSE: F), and Toyota (NYSE: TM). The tracker for Computers & Electronics includes company names like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), as well as several products by Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) such as "iPhone" and "Mac" -- but Google itself is not part of that index.

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