According to VentureBeat, Google Health could be launching soon. Check out this Google login page to get a taste of what Google Health could be about.
I’m not sure yet how I feel about this. Well, that’s not true - I feel uncertainty as to whether it is a good thing or not. Google is clearly becoming a destination for more than just the search page, they are looking to be your portal and a significant chunk of your day, both at work and at play. This, I have liked to date.
But these are some of the services implied from that login page:
- Build online health profiles that belong to you
- Download medical records from doctors and pharmacies
- Get personalized health guidance and relevant news
- Find qualified doctors and connect to time-saving services
- Share selected information with family or caregivers
Being as they own Blogger and Feedburner they have shown themselves to be very friendly towards blogs. I suspect blog integration and directories would be a big part of this. Since they have your health info now they presumably (obviously you would have to opt-in to this) could add that data as metadata that could be searched on.
So for example, here is a typical search right now in Google Blog Search:
All blog entries from the last month written in English with the words “weight loss”
If Google can link bloggers to data such as their weight, they could enable advanced searches like (note this obviously doesn’t return the right data right now!):
or
Privacy advocates freak out about things like this, even if it is opt-in. Me, I can certainly see the benefits. It’s why I wouldn’t mind at all if Amazon bought Tivo and used my Tivo viewing habits to recommend products to me on Amazon. It is convenience for the consumer.
But I see the dark side too. What do you think?
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