Google has announced they are winding down Google Health. I'm terribly disappointed by this as I really thought they had something visionary there.
I wrote this piece last year:Google Health + Android + CardioTrainer has me excited
Coincidentally, Erick Schonfeldover on TechCrunch,interviewedthe creator of Google Health, Adam Bosworth, a few weeks back. He said that the reason it never took off was that
Google Health never asked, What could they do that people would want? Instead. they basically offerd a place to store data. People dont want to store data, they want to have fun.
Hmm, I agree that the lack of any "doing" on the data was an issue but I'm not convinced Social and Fun have any place in my core medical data. I wanted doctors, hospitals, pharmacies etc all filling the data there for me so there was one place for everything. Then, do something with the data. I never want to "check-in" to my pharmacy or become mayor of my liver.
I see a bigger fundamental problem here: Google didn't get buy-in from the data providers. They failed to build the relationships. If you look at Google TV, you see a very similar problem. And if you look at the new Google Music service, the same. Until Google addresses this problem, which is oddly similar to their Social problem, many of these initiatives are going to fail. I'd be interested to see, for example, how many audio device manufacturers they have reached out to since they announced Open Accessory. But then Android is the shining example of how Google can knock it out of the park when working within anexistingecosystem.