Infinity and Beyond

Allow Google to introduce it’s latest product, ‘Google Chrome’ the new web browser has a comic book style introduction here. You can learn more from ‘The Official Google Blog’ that says:

“So check in again tomorrow to try Google Chrome for yourself. We’ll post an update here as soon as it’s ready.”

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We first reported on this when it was in private testing a few months ago and then I made a brief reference to Google’s new medical venture in a Friday review not long ago. Here now are my thoughts on the new feature.

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Google Health announces that it is “safe, secure, and free.” It will not only store your private medical information from multiple facilities but will also let you control access to the information while acting as a medical resource of sorts. They claim they will never sell your data and “you choose what you want to share and what you want to keep private” and for further concerns to take a gander at their privacy policy. I’ve read that policy along with the 6 other pages the policy links to, more on that later. From the welcome screen you can see that Google Health can is broken down into 4 main goals:

• Organize your health information all in one place
• Gather your medical records from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies
• Keep your doctors up-to-date about your health
• Be more informed about important health issues

While I’m a great supporter of maintaining up-to-date, organized copies of your medical records, I also know that it is a task better left to the medical professionals. I’ve worked extensively in the medical records field and not only do I understand the importance of accurate and complete records for proper patient care but I’m also certified in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA). I know just how difficult it can be to make sure a patient’s record from one hospital is fully represented in their chart. This leaves the question of why I might be opposed to Google’s new online version of the medical record. It comes down simply to accountability. According to their terms of service page: 

“Google is not a “covered entity” under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and the regulations promulgated thereunder (“HIPAA”). As a result, HIPAA does not apply to the transmission of health information by Google to any third party.”

If you want the cliff notes on HIPAA I suggest you check out the wikipedia page here and then read the full Act as enacted by congress in 1996 here. Its complex, at times confusing, and it creates government sanctioned rules and regulations on how private medical information can be used, accessed, and handled. Medical record technicians at your local hospital or primary care center are all HIPAA certified and their actions can face potential ramifications unlike the employees of Google if they break those laws. It’s not that I don’t trust Google with a lot of my private information as it is, I use gmail, but without accountability I won’t give up my personal medical history to computer wiz’s in California. They have internal accountability but Google Health has no legal accountability to its users or its third party providers like hospitals and pharmacy’s.

Keep track of your conditions and gain a world of knowledge as only Google could provide.

Throughout the country medical providers have been switching to all electronic versions of medical records. The work I did during my tenure was an integral part of that process. The distinction is that my hospital records once electronic might be as easily hacked as Google’s but if my hospital record is hacked they are obligated to tell me and can face potential liability issues. Google wouldn’t even have to let me know.

This being said when you take the tour of Google Health to decide for yourself you’ll find some great tools that only Google could provide. The greatest benefits I see from this service are the ability to learn more about your conditions, see how your medications might interact and essentially “make your health information work for you”. While there are department’s at hospitals who are already doing that, if they aren’t going electronic for another 5 years, it’s hard to not want to join up with Google who will do the work for you.

For all its potential benefits what it lacks in accountability just does not make this new venture from Google to be worth the risk. I might be in the minority for my generation but on this rarest of cases I side with the baby boomer generation in their reluctance to share such personal information. 

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Yahoo! and Google aren’t trying to become another social destination like facebook or myspace, instead they are trying to take it to a whole new dimension. By incorporating several of the applications and features that social networking sites already contain the companies are trying to build, once again, upon the social dynamics of the web. Connecting users to their similarly minded browsers.

While I don’t see this being a negative step I also don’t see it as a huge step forward. I think social networking sites are destinations for a reason. Most people don’t trust, nor care to share, a lot about their web habits with friends or families. The goal of these new developments would allow users ”to share photos, videos, news reading habits or calendars with their friends and receive alerts about what friends are up to.”  While I know Google and Yahoo! are both competing to become your all in one source for everything you need on the web I feel like it defeats the purpose of the world wide web. It might work for some people but I’m a fan of the web’s vastness and want it to continue to expand not shrink down to two or three monopolized sites. Sure, I use Google for most searches, but when I want to read the news I check CNN, and when I want to see what my friends are up to I call them… or stalk their facebook.

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The Smoking Gun has the scoop on a Pittsburgh couple that is suing Google over their “Street View” feature, which allows users to see photos taken at street-level of the address/map they’re looking up.

The couple claims that they live on a private drive, and sought out the property specifically because of the privacy it afforded them.  Now of course this street-level view has destroyed this privacy by providing pictures of the couple’s house.  So they’re suing for $25,000.

Now, on the one hand I find this one of the more legit complaints that someone could come up with.  I’m also intrigued that they’re only seeking $25K and not $25M.  I mean, you’re suing Google.  You’re really only going to ask for $25K?

But on the other hand, how many people were actually ever going to seek out the home of the Borings’ (yes that’s their last name) on Google?  And more importantly, by seeking out this lawsuit and not keeping the records confidential, they’ve now exposed their names, address, and photos of their home to everyone on the Net.

I actually think that this, in a weird way, brings up a good privacy issue that Google should address–I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea to have the ability to opt-out of photos of your home being posted on the Google Maps feature.  I think you’re able to opt-out of having your phone number listed in Google searches.

What I don’t know however, is if images of your home can be “private”, especially if the pictures are taken from a location not on your property.  I’m very interested to see if Google addresses this issue or if the lawsuit gets swept under the rug…because in the time I’ve written this Google has made significantly more than the $25K needed to pay the Borings off.

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Your doctor visit may one day be powered by Google, much like your internet searching.  As reported at eFluxMedia, Google is going to expand it’s IT business into the medical arena, starting with 1,500-10,000 patients at a clinic in Cleveland.Patients who opt-in will have their medical records transferred to Google.  The idea would be to allow patients better access to their medical information, something patients are increasingly interested in and encouraged by their HMOs to do.What’s not clear is what Google stands to gain from this service.  Will Google sift through your medical records ala Gmail and provide small little Google Ads targeted to your past and present ailments?  Will there be a built in search tool tailored to medical advice?  And if you don’t have time to go to the doctor can you open up your Google medical info service, type a question into the box, and hit the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?It sounds a bit intrusive to me, but Microsoft has already rolled out a similar service (yes–MS beat Google to the punch with their HealthVault service).   

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News Corp. is in talks with Yahoo! but analysts aren’t taking the bait. The idea is that a deal with News Corp. might send Microsoft running but in the end it is more likely that they’ll end up raising their bid price.  Ruport Murdoch has said that they are not interested in bidding on Yahoo! but that doesn’t mean they can’t give that impression anyway. It would be somewhat problematic for News Corp. if any kind of deal actually went though as a reported 20% stake in the struggling search engine would be a step backwards for the media giant. News Corp. already stepped into the interactive world when it bought Myspace in 2005 and doubled it’s web traffic to more than 45 million unique monthly users.

This news comes on the heels of the rejection of the bid by Yahoo! but before Microsoft has made its next move. There are also rumors still floating around about a possible Apple or Google interception of Yahoo! but nothing confirmed as of yet.

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OK, so the last time I checked, everyone loathed the big bad software giant in Redmond. After last week’s surprise unsolicited bid for Yahoo!, everyone is up in arms praising how sweet and amazing this deal will be. How much it will spur innovation. How it will help to stop the evil Google empire.

Um, when did Microsoft stop being the evil empire and Google take the crown?

I’ve got to hand it to the MS PR department. Last year they bought aQuantive and breezed through regulatory approval. But they threw a fit and complained on the hill when Google dared purchase DoubleClick.

Now with the Yahoo! bid people are singing the praises of how great this will be. How right it is. Microsoft is almost playing it off as if it will potentially be hurtful to them, but if they must do it to stop the evil machine of Google then they’ll do it for the public good, even if it means cannibalizing their own businesses.

Google of course is not sitting idly by. They’ve fired back with a response of their own. Sure it would mean a lot for search.  But it would also give MS a near monopoly on the free email services and instant messaging.

Yet to hear people like David Kirkpatrick, sr. editor at CNN, say this will drive innovation (see: “Why Microsoft’s Yahoo bid makes sense”) just makes no sense to me. I can’t recall the last time that Microsoft was *truly* innovative.  And innovation is driven by a market with a lot of competition.  Microsoft isn’t competing–it’s trying to just stay in the game.  And somehow I don’t see a lot of innovation coming out of a group with just two major players in it.  That being said, at least Yahoo! took steps to keep up with Google in making their online email system slicker, unlike Hotmail/Live.  And there’s even been rumblings of Google enabling other companies to come in and block Microsoft’s bid with a counter offer, just to keep Yahoo! a bit more “independent” if you will.

I slightly dread the power this combo would give MS over the Internet.  Yahoo! has some of the most-trafficked sites on the net.   I really don’t want a Vista-like experience to be brought to my browser.  “Are you sure you want to Google that?”  “You’ve clicked on the link to access your email.  Would you like to give yourself permission to access your email?”  Seriously?

And lastly, they’re going to spend $44.6 BILLION dollars on Yahoo! (not counting all of the legal fees, acquisition costs, marketing, integration, etc. etc.). And they’ve identified $1B in savings. WOW! A whole ONE billion?? With $44.6B you’d think you could throw some darts at a pile of startups and find two or three which could generate $1B for you. And investors can kiss that sweet giant dividend payout goodbye.

I think it really should be settled with an arm-wrestling contest between Bill Gates and Jerry Yang.  If Bill wins, MS gets Yahoo!  If Jerry wins, Yahoo! stays on it’s own, and gets to take a baseball bat to the Hotmail servers just for fun.

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If this deal goes through do you think they’d change their name? What will Google try to buy once the deal closes? Themselves?

According to S. Ballmer “A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved,” so it looks like they’ll keep doing what they do best. Buy the competition until they have none. As a product of Redmond, Microsoft’s home town, I have seen the company go from it’s original buildings in the middle of a forest to what it is now, a mini city. Wait, no, I take that back. Microsoft has become physically what it is operationally. A huge mess of piecemealed buildings and departments without easy access from one to the other. As the physical size of the headquarters has grown and diversified so too has the company, but in a bad way. The limited parking, the incredible traffic jam that it creates at 5:00pm when the entire crew heads home, and don’t forget about Bill’s notoriously bad driving, it all adds up to a lack of vision in the company. It has moved from innovative to reactive.

With the success of Google they have spent billions trying to catch up. Instead of working hard and truly revolutionizing the industry the way they once did Microsoft has become too big for it’s own good and can no longer produce anything of real value on their own. The best thing to come out of MSFT in the last few years would probably be the Xbox gaming system, but I only like that because it has Halo on it and that was developed by Bungie (which they bought and have thankfully let loose again). Everything from the Zune to the acquisition of aQuantive has been a defensive move.

Maybe if this deal fails they’ll have to go back to the drawing board and I can only hope the wipe it clean this time and start from scratch instead of just smearing around the colors.

You can see below the mess that it has become and what it will become. The company has more property North of this map and has broken ground in nearby Bellevue on their first high-rise. Also check out this ‘Incredibles’ inspired monorail system that has been proposed here.

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Viacom announced today that they would not longer have their online ads served by DoubleClick, and have instead signed a 5-year deal to have their ads served by Microsoft on their recently acquired Atlas network. The deal represents another win for Microsoft in the online ad wars.

Viacom sued Google $1B due to copyrighted videos posted on Google’s YouTube site, while Google maintains it has complied by removing copyrighted materials once notified.

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The Hollywood Reporter is reporting (imagine that) the #1 ‘googled’ term for 2007 is “iPhone”. The new Apple phenomenon that wasn’t on the minds of Google users last year has skyrocketed into first place with the devices announcement and subsequent launch earlier this year. The top 10 was full of tech and entertainment searches including “facebook”, “club penguin” and, in second place “Webkinz.”

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