Furthering their attempts to take over the world, Google is now offering a service dubbed Google Flu Trends that will track flu cases on a state-by-state basis.  This task is accomplished by simply tracking search quires for flu-like symptoms by state. Sound like an inexact science?

Google took their preliminary data complied throughout the 2007-2008 flu season, compared it to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stats and the data matched up; thus spawned Google Flu Trends. Google does note that this system is still experimental and they are hoping there continues to be a strong correlation between the data sets. Find out more about this service here.