Google Health: It’s Over
I guess you’ve heard the news:
Google is giving up on its vision of helping people live healthier lives with online personal health records.
When Google Health was introduced in 2008, Marissa Mayer, a Google executive, said it would be a “large ongoing initiative” that the company hoped would attract millions of regular users.
But Google Health never really caught on.
Well, I know it’s easy to say now, but I wasn’t that surprised. After the first steps, and after years of hard work, Google Health failed to make a real impact on healthcare. When I read the news, an old blog entry of mine came to my mind:
Expecting Google Health to change healthcare is something like expecting Wikipedia to substitute all encyclopaedias in the world…
Some great pieces on this issue:
Not sure how “great” those all are … some of them seem to fall into the category of “I, a person of great opinions and not much real world results of my own, am happy to pontificate on the graceful passing of this health tool from Big Stupid Old Google Who Never Accomplished Anything In The World.”
I want to know who’s creating change in the world! I’ve read about half the posts in that list and I don’t recall seeing any insights that lead to a better future.
(Note, I did not just say anything about Google Health past or present. I’m meta-commenting – a comment about the commentators.)