OddThinking

Here’s my pitch to Google.

We’ll take a sample of, say, 10,000 enrolled voters. We’ll record their voting preferences, and then install a tracking system to detect what sites they visit, what sites they bookmark, what Google search-terms they use, what keywords appear in their Gmail accounts etc.

We’ll take a team of statisticians to perform all sorts of cool Bayesian analysis (and that secret Markov whatsit stuff everyone keeps talking about) to their Internet usage habits to work out what behaviour turns out to be significant to predicting their vote.

Then we will offer a new service to millions of Internet users of voting age – Google Vote.

For a nominal fee, Google will track your usage, predict your most likely voting pattern and, come election time, register your vote on your behalf. All without leaving your chair, and without having to educate yourself enough to make an informed choice.

Note that you don’t need to visit overtly partisan sites for it to work. Many sites are going to be slightly correlated to your political outlook; overall your reading patterns are likely to give away your leanings.

Sure it will make the occasional error for individual users with abberant Internet behaviour, but overall, it is certain to be very accurate! More accurate than chad-based systems, certainly!

Who wants to buy in to my Web 2.0-ready business plan before I pitch it to Google?