Sunny Ahn's WebLog

Google announced today that it has begun storing patient records for a few thousand individuals at Cleveland Clinic.  These health records will include prescription information, allergies and medical histories and will be protected through a password-based system, which will also allow patients to have access to Google email and search tools.

The key reason for Google’s entry in the space is to expand its search capabilities, moving beyond public environments (searching on the net) to more private situations.   While it is not entirely clear how Google plans to make money from its health service, its strategy of providing more searches through its technology is always the company’s first focus. 

Not surprisingly, others have also joined the fray including Microsoft, through its HealthVault and AOL founder Steve Case through Revolution Health.   Yet, the key issue for many privacy groups is that much of this information is not covered by HIPPA, which potentially opens to door for these companies to utilize the information for other purposes, beyond simple private access by patients to their own information. 

It was announced on Tuesday that Google plans to invest tens of millions of dollars in R&D in renewable energy.  The company has stated that the technologies created by Google will be used directly by Google itself, as the company is a big user of energy.  Google will hire approximately 30 people into a newly created clean-energy division by 2008.

The company will also fund other investments through its philanthropic arm, Google.org.  The group has about $2 billion worth of Google stock to invest. 

Google launched today its free 1-800 DA service for business listings, as a push to move towards more non-web based services.  1-800-GOOG-411 will not provide residential listings and will be a competitive product to Jingle’s 800-Free-411 service.

It was only a matter of time before Google entered the phone business.  Rumor has it that Google is working with Orange utilizing HTC to create a Google branded phone.  Makes sense as the web world begins to enter the world of communication – a Google phone, coupled with Google software and mobile advertising… We will see if it comes to reality.

For those living the world of intellectual property, there is often very little we can do about sifting through document after document to find competing ideas.  Enter Google.  They have put together an interesting site that makes it easier to search for relevant topics and has a layout that is quite user friendly, compared with the somewhat ‘go away’ interface of the USPTO site.  nice job Google.

http://www.google.com/patents

Google is finally ready to launch it’s Checkout online payment service, that allows individuals to buy goods online directly from Google search sites.  I, for one, will certainly give Checkout a try.  Their technology has been simple and straightforward to use.  This will certainly be troubling news for eBay’s Paypal as there is finally someone with signficant funds to compete with them.

With the announcement of Yahoo and eBay forming an alliance in the online world, including advertising, payment and communication, it is more evidence that big web players with have to work together with a select few, rather than competing fiercely with one another.  While the Yahoo/eBay deal is focused in many ways on competing with Google, both companies will likely beneifit from the arrangement, particularly eBay.  eBay will be able to further leverage its Paypal service as the preferred way of payment on Yahoo, as well as push out its Skype communication services to Yahoo as well.

Interesting, with Google’s $1 billion investment in Time Warner’s AOL late last year, it leaves Microsoft as the last big player not to have made a move.  There is speculation that it will partner with content, community and other players to bolster its online advertising service.  Time will tell but the industry is certainly changing from the “I do it myself” attitude. 

As these large IM providers finally get connected to one another (as announced by IBM/AOL/Yahoo/Google in January 2006 and Microsoft/Yahoo in October 2005), the natural next step would be to allow people to find and connect to other devices (e.g., mobile phones) via the IM interface.  Questions still arise regarding privacy.