The economy grew by 3.6 percent in Germany and in the Netherlands with 1.7 percent.

The Dutch economy benefits from increased exports and growth in Germany.

The German Minister of Economic Affairs Rainer Brüderle predicted a “XXL-growth”, already last year. And in January he could report that Germany is striding forward.

Germany is recovering faster than many other European countries from the crisis. The traditional motors of the economy, industry and exports, are doing well again. And finally domestic consumption increased as well: Germans not only earn money, they spend also.

The German economy is heavily dependent on exports. This is an advantage when it other parts of the world are doing well, like now in China, India and Brazil. These countries buy plenty of cars, machinery and chemicals.

In 2010, German exports grew by 18.5 percent. Last year household spending grew by an average by 1.2 percent.

Germans expect to spend even more in 2011. That’s a big difference with countries such as France, Britain and Spain, where public expectations are negative.

More people are searching the internet for luxury goods and holidays again. The search for Mercedes Benz and Aston Martin increased 30% since January and 10% more searches for Mortgages.

According to Google’s search results from the recent months, consumers are more optimistic about the economy and are becoming increasingly confident about the prospects for an economic recovery.

It is not the first time that Google has predicted the future. Recently Google forecasted Alexander Rybak from Norway as the lucky winner of Eurovision 2009 before the final with his song Fairytale.

Google also predicted the future of flu, just before the swine flu outbreak. Google applied its massive data-collecting power for the first time to prediction of the spread of disease. It turns out that Google can accurately estimate current flu levels one to two weeks faster than any other professional report.

Google Flu Trends takes the general search tracking technology pioneered by Google Trends and applies it specifically to influenza.

It has been said that if you put a million monkeys in front of a million computers, you would eventually produce an accurate economic forecast. Since Google is powering our search behavior– it has the power to predict the future.