Those of you who know me well, likely know I'm a big fan of TradeSports, a marketplace where you can trade options in things like political races, supreme court nominees and European metric football (soccer) matches. (They had the 2004 election nailed prior to the polls closing, unlike the pollsters who were still confused two days later.) So when Google announced on their blog that they were using an internal options exchange to predict their launch dates, when managers would quit and other important internal pieces of information, I was excited. Even more exciting is they've totally geeked out, even showing graphs like entropy of their decision prices over time. But the most exciting thing... IT WORKS! Google is able to predict their launch dates with a remarkable degree of accuracy! Microsoft, can we have some predictive markets for your launch dates? Pretty please?
You can find the article here. (Hat tip: Marginal Revolution)