Google Health-is this crossing the Rubicon into dangerous waters
January 24, 2008 by Tris Hussey
Filed under Business
Whoa. If that isn’t mixing metaphors I don’t know what is! Regardless, Dan Misener asks via CBC’s Spark if Google Health is going too far–Spark | CBC Radio | Doctor Google… Paging Doctor Google?
More Musings Than Hard Questions
Okay why aren’t VentureBeat or Google Blogoscoped (who broke the story) asking these questions? You know, as Dan points out, Google already knows a ton about us. Pretty much all my email, wait, no all my email is through Gmail. So they see who I email and who emails me. They know what I search about (no really someone else must have been at my computer searching for that)…do they really need to know about my health? Do I want them to know about that?
All fair questions. You know, just know, that to support Google Health there will be contextual ads. Searching for information about your baby’s diaper rash, oh look an ad for Desitin (this was what my parents slathered on the bums of all four of us). I don’t even want to think about the ads for more sensitive subjects.
Is All That Google Hath Wrought Good?
This begs the question, just because Google made it, is it good? The don’t be evil bit, is well, tired.
Sure it might be an interesting idea for Google to help you organize your health information, but I’m not sure that it’s a good idea.
