If knowledge is power, the Google revolution has empowered us all. Never in human history have so many people had access to so much knowledge, made relevant and ordered to their needs.
And while critics may decry the company's privacy-invading omniscience, from Street View to Latitude (mobile phone software that tracks your friends' whereabouts), what's less publicised are its little-known humanitarian projects through its charitable arm, Google.org.
PLOTTING OUTBREAKS: The Flu Trends software shows flu levels based on related searches
A program called 'Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico' ended up graphing the country's flu levels with clear-cutting accuracy before official figures had been made available.
Of course, there are limitations to this approach. Google doesn't have enough data on Mexico's flu levels from the past – a must for estimating current trends – and not enough people in Mexico use the internet, so the system is constantly being tweaked.
Attentive users will notice questionnaires at the bottom of each page when they search for 'headache' or 'fever.' "Did you search for this topic because you have a fever or your friend has a fever?" it asks.
Weeding out those who feel sick from students researching a school project is proving a tough task. But Flu Trends' estimates are still accurate, despite the margin of error. Many believe the spread of HIV/AIDS could have been averted had Africa been monitored more in the 1970s.
That's why Google.org has laid down the motto 'predict and prevent', with the aim of preventing outbreaks rather than just reacting to them. Following that line, it gave a $5.5million multi-year grant to the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI) to collect and analyse blood samples of people and animals in Africa and Southeast Asia.
Another $2.5million Google grant to the Global Health and Security Initiative, which works in Southeast Asia, is funding similar detection networks.