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Google Health Opens To the Public
Several readers noted that the limited pilot test of Google Health has ended, and Google is now offering the service to the public at large. Google Health allows patients to enter health information, such as conditions and prescriptions, find related medical information, and share information with their health care providers (at the patient's request). Information may be entered manually or imported from partnered health care providers. The service is offered free of charge, and Google won't be including advertising. The WSJ and the NYTimes provide details about Google's numerous health partners.
I for one won't be using it while their terms of service explicitly states that HIPAA doesn't apply to Google.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
so, google will have your surfing profile, your financial information, tons of images of you, your house, your friends, your networks, and how will add to it your health information. You know, Big Brother can be a government, but it can also be a corporation. Even one that claims not to do any evil.
-- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
6. If it's free, how does Google make money off Google Health?
Much like other Google products we offer, Google Health is free to anyone who uses it. There are no ads in Google Health. Our primary focus is providing a good user experience and meeting our users' needs.
I've heard enough. I don't know what their long-term plan for monetizing Google Health is, and I don't really care now. I don't trust Google enough to consider even for a second entrusting my health care information to them (and I say this as someone who has thought very highly of the company since the beginning). And their weasly answer to the obvious question above, I think, justifies my mistrust.
Every for-profit company's primary focus is - making a profit. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with this, and the ideal situation arises when "providing a good user experience and meeting [...] users' needs" is aligned with the profit motive.
So why they can't be honest about their motivations in undertaking an expensive, large-scale project like this -- whatever those motivations are -- instead of trying to make us believe that they're doing it "out of the goodness of their hearts?" All their mealy-mouthedness accomplishes is to raise the suspicion that they've got something nasty up their sleeves. And that ensures that many users, including me, will never entrust their most private of private data to Google.
:wq