The final match of the FIFA World Cup Championship tournament is set to take place in one hour, between Germany and Argentina. There will be no more silly sex bans, and Google will try to predict what you want to talk about, as well as what you might want to buy. While Google is busy reading your mind the legal prostitution industry in Brazil will try to return to normalcy.
Though prostitution in Brazil is technically legal, the conservative Brazilian government doesn't want outsiders to know about it. Their tendency to downplay this industry and denounce "sexual tourism" might be partially due to the sickeningly high amount of child prostitutes are forced into sex work, however, there is a large and vocal contingent of self-employed women who like what they do, and they don't like strange and dangerous laws which increase their risk of safety and well-being, which seems to happen every time there is a major international event.
While some of the sex worker community might have expected a bump in business due to the football tournament, a weak global economy, along with an influx of prostitutes from other countries and frankly, a lower class of traveler, have all combined for a lackluster event season for local sex workers.
One woman was surprised at the disappointing numbers accrued during the World Cup (via USA Today):
"She said the World Cup has hardly been the boom she hoped for, and that many tourists have come from Latin American countries with weak currencies and haggle over prices lower than what a Brazilian would pay. 'The tourists have even less money than we have,' she said dryly."
While the sex industry struggles with a new clientele, Silicon Valley is focusing on a demographic they know very well: you. Right now, this very second, the "Google War Room" is preparing to give you all the things you like. Which today, probably has a lot to do with soccer (via Mercury News):
"'Once we start getting the data, we'll decide how to tell that story and find interesting ways to visualize it, not just for football fans but for everyone. There's so much anticipation built up for the final match that there'll be no shortage of things to talk about.'
"More than simply tracking the volume of searches, the team is using sophisticated monitoring tools to look for spikes in certain words and phrases that might indicate some World Cup-related hot topic that fans in one country or another are obsessing over."
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