I think this article discusses the issue fairly, but only if you read what it actually says, instead of just reading one or two sentences and guessing the rest.

I think this article discusses the issue fairly, but only if you read what it actually says, instead of just reading one or two sentences and guessing the rest. Google doesn't claim that GFT replaces epidemiologists, and epidemiologists agree. And the article didn't say otherwise, if you actually read it. Google, and the CDC, and the article, agree that Google returns data much faster than the CDC does, which is a service of some value. Similarly, Google can sometimes give finer-grained geographic resolution. Everyone agrees that it would be nice to know about flu trends in countries that don't have good epidemiological analysis. GFT helps with that. The article isn't saying that GFT is useless, nor spreading FUD, nor is it anti-strange-new-technology. Nor are the epidemiologists saying that. The article is pointing out that GFT this year didn't do as well as it has most years since its inception, and that the modest-but-proud claims of the GFT team are pretty much exactly proportional to GFT's efficacy, rather than being false modesty. Note that there are other Google Trends published, many with similar benefits and faults. For example, Google's guesses about unemployment rates are released in real time, but are presumably accurate than government reports. That's a tradeoff. tl;dr: GFT is useful but not miraculous, and if you read the article carefully, the article says that.