I believe the snarky Inquirer take on this (after a previously touted splash of cash on life extension) was "because dead people don't click on ads". At least funnier than the standard flavor of Haterade.
>Haters: "No thanks, way too intrusive. I don't want you tracking me/selling my data/showing me ads."
Why is anyone cynical of such an activity deemed a "hater"? Because they don't conform and align with your own views on the subject?
Why not go on step further into common internet vitriol and just label them "trolls" for said disagreement?
I've no issue with Google producing such a product and me buying it, even at a relatively high cost, if the benefits are there. What I don't want is to pay a significant chunk of money for said product AND still have to hand over biochemical data to Google, an advertising firm, to use the thing.
> Around 2002 I attended a small party for Google—before its IPO, when it only focused on search. I struck up a conversation with Larry Page, Google's brilliant cofounder, who became the company's CEO in 2011. “Larry, I still don't get it. There are so many search companies. Web search, for free? Where does that get you?” My unimaginative blindness is solid evidence that predicting is hard, especially about the future, but in my defense this was before Google had ramped up its ad-auction scheme to generate real income, long before YouTube or any other major acquisitions. I was not the only avid user of its search site who thought it would not last long.
> But Page's reply has always stuck with me: “Oh, we're really making an AI.”
Seeing projects like this only affirm what I've generally felt about Google. They don't build stuff to sell ads. They sell ads to do cool stuff like this.
Decreasing contrast in the background of ads, this especially hurts older people as ability to see contrast decreases with age, and the FTC found that almost half the people fail to notice that there are ads on the page, thus forcing products that are first in the organic results to pay Google for ads.
Tracking the emails in the free Google Apps for Education and even paid Google Apps for Business to build ad profiles, making misleading statements to the public that they're not doing so, and then when it finally came to having to make statements to federal court, having to tell the truth about it and then claiming the consumer Gmail policy applied to Apps for Education data.
Tracking the physical location of Android phones for ad purposes without properly informing users and disabling things like Google Now if you disable the tracking.
Google employee accesses personal information of others. Google says it has fixed the issue, but how do we even know? Is there any legal safeguard against someone at Google reading your email?
Stopping Acer from shipping Aliyun OS by threatening to pull the Play Store and Android beta access. Bonus points for enforcing this by the duplicitous moniker 'Open Handset Alliance' doublespeak
Making people literally cry with the forced Google+ integration into Youtube and making confusing UX to make people share more than they want to, in order to compete with Facebook.
Companies over time become whatever their revenue stream requires of them. There are exceptions, but very few.
If you'd like to read further, The Innovator's Dilemma and related material has a lot of examples of companies where inertia around existing lines of revenue was strong enough to kill them.
But it's deeper than that. It's only obvious because those companies had their markets shift under them. I think the same sort of inertia is endemic, but it only becomes visible when circumstances change. E.g., look at the number of newspaper companies that existed before 1994, and look at how many are thriving today.
Google's not immune to this. Whatever wonders they come up with, the company is stuffed with people who are very good at selling their users (that is, us) to their customers (the advertisers). It's entirely reasonable to fear what those people will do with my medical data.
There's that, but I also think some users are still a little spooked about the whole NSA scare, and are hesitant to give up trust to a company that could be forcefully controlled by the NSA or secret court rulings.
It's not Google's fault, but more the U.S. Government for being incapable to reign in control of certain organizations.
Personally I don't care - from a data perspective I'm know I'm not a special snowflake, but for others I can understand their stress.
>>You see Google as a company that is just serving ads.
>>I see Google as a company collecting and organizing information.
You can see it however you want. The truth can be found by asking a simple question: how does Google make money? By serving ads. They may collect and organize information in the process, but ultimately they are an advertising company.
I'm on the fence about this detector. On the one hand, yes, there are significant benefits. On the other hand, the costs are also monumental. One has to cast their fanboy/hater hat aside and weigh these pros and cons carefully and objectively before making a decision.
If they came up with a highly effective method to quickly and inexpensively screen me for cancer or an impending heart attack...
I would do it because their interests are aligned with mine: they want me to live a lot longer so I can do a lot more searches and view more youtube videos etc, and so do I. Our reasons for wanting me to live longer are different, but they get their benefit and I get mine, fair trade.
Purely hypothetically: access to affordable medical insurance becomes contingent upon such a scan. You have a developing condition which will render you uninsurable.
I'm not suggesting Google would or even legally could consider creating a bidding system for insurance companies to use clean scans as a leadgen system, but in the unlikely event that they did feel so inclined, it wouldn't exactly be a wild departure from their business model
The best thing about the Affordable Care Act is that it prohibits discrimination based on preexisting conditions. If a sick person applies for health insurance, the insurance company has to issue it, and the rate can only be set based on your age, smoking status, and location.
So the entire risk pool/population has to bite the cost of the "previously uninsured"? Whether they want to or not? Sorry, nevermind that second question, it was rhetorical. Of course it doesn't matter if they want to or not, it's effectively a government mandated "tax". Taxes are almost never voluntary.
Yes, it makes sense if you think about that "tax" as the payment for the lottery ticket of a functioning body and brain.
Every person here won that lottery ticket, when we could have just as easily suffered from any number of horrible diseases and disorders. Not wanting to pay higher premiums b/c the "lotto losers" are included is like not wanting to pay for a lotto ticket after the fact because you know the rare outcome won't hit you.
So because the current best option is grouping people based on imprecise risk factors like age, demographics, and hereditary problems, we should forever turn a blind eye to individual warning signs even if they could save our lives?
This is a depressingly pessimistic way of ignoring the real underlying problem: health care is too fucking expensive.
2018: Google Health Scanner begins operation in selected pilot cities. Lines wrap around the block as people try to make it in while it's still free (even though the crowd is exclusively composed of people who could certainly afford it, because it's in a whitewashed, gentrified suburban neighborhood).
2019: Apple (January) and later Microsoft (October) respond with their own health scanners. Integrating with their respective data silos on personal health data, only people with iPhones or Windows Phones can be screened at an Apple Store Clinic or Windows You location.
2025: A federal case reveals that Google's initial scanner, in an attempt to reduce false positives, left millions with false confidence in their health. Google settles and introduces a subscription plan.
2027: Leaked emails, photographs, and a misconfigured Hangout that was broadcast live on YouTube show decisively that Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle are colluding to keep wages low for the medical staff they employ. Oracle doesn't even have any medical staff, it just wanted in on the collusion. The federal government reacts by saying "These people have our medical results now and we're not going near this with a ten-foot pole."
2030: Google announces Nexus Implant, a biometric device that relays data in real-time to Google. This is lauded by the CDC as a major help in combating epidemics. Apple launches iMe later that year. Microsoft released a biometric implant in 2004, but it was derided as "too clunky." Surface You comes out in 2032.
2031: For the 2031 flu season, biometrics users are advised to upgrade to a version with vaccination pods. Capable of being intelligently released if it detects you are exposed to a specific flu strain, this enables the immunocompromised to be "just-in-time vaccinated". Thanks to the tracking data reported back from the implants, flu is at an all-time low.
2033: Massive vulnerabilities rock the now ludicrously decrepit but still used X.509 CA infrastructure. Nobody discusses leaving X.509.
2034: First jailbreak exploits for iMe released, allowing users to circumvent the trusted computing chip on the iMe and load custom firmware. This is initially used by biohackers looking to access raw sensor data.
Spring 2035: Unrest in Bahrain turns coldly bloody as the regime infects anyone with an iMe, Nexus Implant, or Surface Inside with acute vaccination sickness, caused by firing all vaccination pods simultaneously (all implants are now pre-loaded with vaccinations for common infections). A postmortem of the attack determines that the Bahrainian national CA deployed an exploit similar to the jailbreak to issue rogue commands to the vaccination units.
Fall 2035: Protestors in China, Russia and the Ukraine keel over, eyes bleeding, as a custom-made virus is released from backdoored implants. Google defends placing the kill-switches as a cost of doing business in accordance with foreign law in foreign countries.
Winter 2035: As tensions run high during a trade dispute between China, Greater Korea, and Malaysia, rouge cyberattackers kill thousands of people using unpatched implants. Calls increase for implants to be recalled, but the flu season looks to be the worst in a long time, and critics say superbugs caused by on-demand antibiotics use via the CleanU app (YC 2033) could be more fatal than the unpatched implants. After heavy lobbying, Google supports Android Z for the Nexus Implant.
Spring 2036: The trade dispute worsens, and after a misstep on the part of a US mediator, a cyberattack from "patriotic Chinese citizens" kills several local, state, and federal government workers and politicians. Presidential hopeful Chris Schwarzenegger is killed. The United States demands sanctions on China, alleging the attack to have originating from PLA-controlled networks. Both countries enter into an economic death spiral as they try to disentangle their economies. A SpaceX launch is misinterpreted by a Chinese early-warning system as a nuclear launch and, fearing annihilation, the PRC unleashes its now-substantial nuclear arsenal on America and NATO. Russia interprets Ukraine-bound missiles as attacks on its soil and, confused by the stealth signatures, fires on NATO as well. The United Kingdom is destroyed instantaneously. This escalates to a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, New Rhodesia, and France. The world is a smoking ruin. As the radiation slowly declines over the next few million years, the wasteland left behind is left to the lichen.
Moral of the story? Stay away from Google's medical initiatives.
I am not necessarily convinced, but kudos for an imaginative, interesting, passionate contribution to the debate. With lots of nicely constructed details.
I doubt a company would jeopardize their reputation by doing that, and even if they did, the Affordable Care Act would prevent insurance companies from discriminating against you on your medical history or genetics.
The ACA, if left intact, would prevent companies from discriminating against you when they provide you with /health/ insurance. Life, disability, etc. not included.
"I want to give you this scan that might add a year to your life, for free! Isn't that awesome! Aren't I the coolest person in the world?"
"What do you get out of it?"
"Total access to your physical records, which may be shared with the feds based on an NSL, intercepted by various foreign governments without our knowledge (including our own government), sold on the open market by a bad employee, or just farmed out to advertisers in exchange for a buck."
"Ah. Er. What part of that was you being awesome again?"
ADD: Don't get me wrong; this is probably truly awesome. Could save hundreds of thousands of lives. Just don't blow smoke up my ass and tell me it doesn't come without a cost, it's costing all of us bit-by-bit. The bill is adding up.
Scanning to see cancers earlier and prevent heart attacks is not going to add 20 years to your life anyway. You can have organ failure even without cancer, and you can die of many other conditions as well. It's not a silver bullet.
This has nothing to do with health insurance. Google doesn't even sell health insurance. And if I understand correctly, health insurance companies aren't allowed to discriminate any more anyway.
Not that it's wrong though. Imagine if you said the same thing about fire insurance. That it was unfair that they were allowed to set higher premiums on wooden buildings. Or a better analogy, if the fire insurance companies wanted to come into the building and inspect the materials, foundation, the wiring, if the fire alarms worked, etc.
So, to be clear, you're fine with the idea of being uninsured because of your genome, or a pattern of posts which suggests you might have a chronic illness?
Just because it's "not allowed" doesn't mean it doesn't currently and won't in the future happen. They'll always find a way.
I would ideally like health care to be subsidized. But if you want an insurance based model, then you have to accept the realities of how insurance works. What you describe is against the entire point of insurance.
The point of insurance is to exploit the gap between perceived and actual risk, and to profit from it - it's not to provide a safety net, or anything of the sort - it's to make money.
By having greater knowledge about your prospective customer, you can better anticipate the probability and magnitude of any potential claim, and thereby adjust premiums accordingly, or simply refuse insurance as the prospect is likely to be either unprofitable or an active drain to the insurer.
So - this is absolutely aligned with the interests of the insurance industry - not of the consumer, no, but insurance never was aligned with their interests - were it, it would not exist.
Haters: "No thanks, way too intrusive. I don't want you tracking me/selling my data/showing me ads."