Google Health Will Be Ad-Free

Medical-records service now being tested will profit by increasing search traffic
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 1, 2008 10:02 AM CST
Google Health Will Be Ad-Free
Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google, addresses attendees of the Healthcare Information and Management System Society Conference in Orlando, Fla., Thursday, Feb. 28, 2008. Google Inc. will not use advertising to support its new Internet health service, Schmidt said Thursday in the company's first...   (Associated Press)

The newest member of the Google family, Google Health, will not have advertising, CEO Eric Schmidt said this week, but will earn its keep from the traffic it draws to the company’s search engine. The new service stores health records, allowing users to share test results, prescriptions and other information with multiple medical providers; it's currently being tested at the Cleveland Clinic, and isn't open to the public yet .

It will be name and password protected, just like Google e-mail accounts, but some worry that users will risk breaches of their medical privacy. Schmidt waves off such concerns. “Our model is that the owner of the data has control over who can see it,” he says.  “Trust, for Google, is the most important currency on the Internet.” (More Google stories.)

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