8 ms·

Not sure it would be legal, but I would put a significant amount of devs onto predicting stocks. A blog goes more silent or people start Googling for "what is f

Not sure it would be legal, but I would put a significant amount of devs onto predicting stocks. A blog goes more silent or people start Googling for "what is fraud, exactly?" from IPs known to contain lots of IBM workers (that would be more on the illegal end for sure). Obviously a lawyer would need to review every input, but they have access to machine learning and data so much so that they could rock the exchanges.

mrich 15y ago
I recall Eric Schmidt saying they thought about this, but the lawyers told them it would be illegal so they didn't explore it further.
- 3pt14159 15y ago
  At what point does it become illegal though. Surely if Goldman can trade then there must be some aggregation that they are allowed to trade at. "Debt consolidation" search trends for example. If it spikes in a certain country then they would be able to make decisions on that. Seems like so much untapped potential.
- kragen 15y ago
  I recall a friend of mine who left Google, fully vested, for the early days of Facebook, who said they thought about this but decided insider trading would be evil, so they didn't do it. I'd be really surprised if they had to talk to lawyers to figure that out.
rdl 15y ago
It would be tempting to do the same as a payment processor of some kind, too.
orijing 15y ago
The interesting thing is that Google itself has an internal hedge fund (or something close) that trades its cash hoard. I'm not sure if they do it algorithmically or whether they just buy-and-hold various indices, but my suspicion is that (given their engineering background) they probably do some algorithmic trading.
abraham 15y ago
Google is already predicting flu trends. I imagine that could be modified for stocks or just about anything else. http://www.google.org/flutrends/ http://www.google.org/flutrends/
- jrockway 15y ago
  Using search data to predict public health issues is legal and good PR. Using search data to trade on insider information is illegal and bad PR. That's why we do the flu thing and not the stock thing :)
  - pnathan 15y ago
    Question. How is it illegal if its publicly scrapable information?
    - jiggy2011 15y ago
      It wouldn't be public information they would be using their own server logs which of course no one else has access to.
      - moe 15y ago
        The information was public already before google scraped it.
  - herval 15y ago
    why is using search data to trade illegal?
    - jrockway 15y ago
      Why is using material non-public information to trade illegal? I don't know, I didn't write the law.
      - moe 15y ago
ams6110 15y ago
This sort of thing is already being done. http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.3003 http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.3003

mrich 15y ago

I recall Eric Schmidt saying they thought about this, but the lawyers told them it would be illegal so they didn't explore it further.

3pt14159 15y ago
At what point does it become illegal though. Surely if Goldman can trade then there must be some aggregation that they are allowed to trade at. "Debt consolidation" search trends for example. If it spikes in a certain country then they would be able to make decisions on that. Seems like so much untapped potential.
kragen 15y ago
I recall a friend of mine who left Google, fully vested, for the early days of Facebook, who said they thought about this but decided insider trading would be evil, so they didn't do it. I'd be really surprised if they had to talk to lawyers to figure that out.

rdl 15y ago

It would be tempting to do the same as a payment processor of some kind, too.

orijing 15y ago

The interesting thing is that Google itself has an internal hedge fund (or something close) that trades its cash hoard. I'm not sure if they do it algorithmically or whether they just buy-and-hold various indices, but my suspicion is that (given their engineering background) they probably do some algorithmic trading.

abraham 15y ago

Google is already predicting flu trends. I imagine that could be modified for stocks or just about anything else. http://www.google.org/flutrends/ http://www.google.org/flutrends/

jrockway 15y ago
Using search data to predict public health issues is legal and good PR. Using search data to trade on insider information is illegal and bad PR. That's why we do the flu thing and not the stock thing :)
- pnathan 15y ago
  Question. How is it illegal if its publicly scrapable information?
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    It wouldn't be public information they would be using their own server logs which of course no one else has access to.
    - moe 15y ago
      The information was public already before google scraped it.
- herval 15y ago
  why is using search data to trade illegal?
  - jrockway 15y ago
    Why is using material non-public information to trade illegal? I don't know, I didn't write the law.
    - moe 15y ago

ams6110 15y ago

This sort of thing is already being done. http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.3003 http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.3003