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Back when Google was still the "Don't Be Evil" company, it earned incredible PR mileage from "Flu Trends" — a service that it boasted could crunch search queries and detect the seasonal flu faster than health officials.
It worked great, until it didn't. Flu Trends failed spectacularly during the 2013 flu season and Google quietly killed the project.
I can't help but think back to that episode as I watch Google, and pretty much every company, grapple with the challenges and disruption of the coronavirus.
Today's hottest tech companies are built on the predictive power of Big Data and AI; the notion that greater processing brawn and smarter algorithms provide a competitive edge. So it's striking that tech companies don't appear to be any better prepared for the cascading challenges of the coronavirus epidemic than other businesses.
In the span of just a few weeks, Apple and Microsoft went from regaling their shareholders with rosy business forecasts to warning them of virus-related sales shortfalls. Travel plans and workplace policies for tech company employees are evolving by the day, leaving some employees flustered and rumors circulating.
And tech conferences, the splashy pageants of product launches, keynote talks, and hype, are following a similar trajectory. In quick succession, we've seen Facebook, Adobe, and Google all cancel their developers conferences.
As correspondent Jeff Elder reports, these decisions are not easy ones to make for tech companies, or for the cities that host them. Conference visitors to San Francisco spend an average of $567 a day, according to one industry group's tally.
For the tech companies who put on the events, the costs can't be measured in just dollars and cents. Buzz, cachet, and loyalty with customers and developers are the most valuable currency for platform-based tech businesses. An amazing amount of planning goes into these events, but as the severity of the virus becomes more apparent, the tech companies that organize and attend the conferences are being forced to adapt to circumstances and respond on the fly.
There will almost certainly be more disruption and ripple effects in the months ahead, even if the epidemic doesn't live up to the worst fears.
