8 ms·

Google Wants to Sell You Auto Insurance

52 points by denzil_correa 12y ago

markcerqueira 12y ago
"We determined your sleeping schedule based on your computer and mobile usage. Since you are below the recommended hours suggested and may be tired behind the wheel, we are raising your rate 40% effective immediately."
- lerchmo 12y ago
  Or, our self driving car can cut your premiums in half!
Puts 12y ago
There will probably be a lot of resistance towards self-driving cars from insurance companies as the issue of responsibility becomes much more complicated, so It's probably a good idea for Google to get some influence in this business.
robg 12y ago
Really interesting to consider how self-driving cars will enable lower insurance rates.
zstiefler 12y ago
This seems like a no-brainer for Google. In fact, I would expect them to offer own insurance directly in the near future, for several reasons. First, insurance is one of the big practical hurdles facing their self-driving cars – in an accident, who is at fault? By offering their own product they can potentially circumvent this hurdle. Second, if they begin to offer homeowners insurance, they can tie their rates directly to Nest data, which should allow them to offer more competitive rates and more accurate pricing, similar to what Progressive has done with Snapshot [0]. And lastly, this obviously gives Google access to more, and potentially better, personal data. [0] http://www.progressive.com/auto/snapshot/ http://www.progressive.com/auto/snapshot/
fiatmoney 12y ago
- Adwords for insurance are among the most expensive. Makes total sense for them to take a cut of that market. - There's a huge difference between quote aggregation / marketing / sales, and the actual underwriting / pricing. The prior is far less regulated than the latter. - This has nothing to do with self-driving cars.
mslate 12y ago
As it happened with plane tickets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software), it is happening with car insurance. Insurance is the most expensive vertical in terms of CPC (http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords) simply because it's a very high-margin business and the market for car insurance leads is very hot. The most successful participants in the car insurance leads marketplace (and any leads marketplace TBH) do things that are inherently consumer-unfriendly to achieve as high margins as they do. Will Google do those things? No. So will Google see as much to gain from cutting out these players as they would from allowing these players to pay for AdWords? Eh, we’ll see. Self-driving cars are far, far off, leaving billions of retail dollars on the table between now and then.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > Self-driving cars are far, far off, leaving billions of retail dollars on the table between now and then. 5-7 years is far, far off?
  - mslate 12y ago
    Yes, yes it is--but your off-hand estimate does not do the situation any justice.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      My "off-hand estimate" is from multiple sources: http://www.wired.com/2015/01/rode-500-miles-self-driving-car-saw-future-boring/ http://www.wired.com/2015/01/rode-500-miles-self-driving-car... http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-on-the-future-of-driving-2014-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-on-the-future-of-dr... http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/22/6828161/california-permits-self-driving-cars-google-audi-mercedes-benz http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/22/6828161/california-permits... The idea of you driving your car is essentially dead. Vehicle miles driven per year is already stagnent due to boomers retiring and millennials not having the same inclination for cars as generations past have. Passenger cars sit idle 95% of the time. Its not going to take many autonomous vehicles to replace the current fleet with existing utilization so low.
chollida1 12y ago
This could be a touchy subject for Google. Larry Page always joked that they could start a successful hedge fund with the knowledge people hand them every day. If Google starts aggregating their data to sell insurance I can see people moving away from some of their services. Imagine if your health insurance provider had access to your emails, search history and web queries before deciding if they wanted to provide you with insurance or not...... If they just aggregate quotes from brokers to show to people then I can't see a problem with it. The people who loose out on the adwords revenue, however, might disagree:)
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > Imagine if your health insurance provider had access to your emails, search history and web queries before deciding if they wanted to provide you with insurance or not...... I'm fine with this. With the Affordable Care Act, insurers aren't able to decline you due to preexisting conditions. And previously, they would be able to cancel your policy for medical issues you hid from them. Its already illegal for insurers to discriminate against you based on your genetic profile. What's the concern?
  - drzaiusapelord 12y ago
    Google (probably) knows my sexual orientation, number and frequency of partners, if I'm trying to get pregnant, if I'm self-treating anything, if I'm hiding anything, if I drive recklessly, if I've settled car accidents under the table, etc. Some of these are not protected even under the ACA or other regulations, which may not survive in their current form for very long. There's a lot more to discriminate against when you have total information awareness of a person. Most of it surprisingly legal. As a google search engine user, chrome user, android user, and web dev - I imagine google's picture of me is and highly invasive and creepily accurate. This is bothersome privacy violation and a major competitive advantage against other potential insurers.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      Keep in mind the whole point of insurance is shared, proportional risk. Is it both simultaneously the Wrong Thing for an insurance company to use all available information to make an informed decision, and the Right Thing for a person to put on airs to appear less statistically risky than they actually are? Bluntly, this quacks like an argument for deception for personal gain (via lower premiums). Granted we can talk about insurance companies being shady, but even a completely honest one would, say, rightly raise your rates after an accident.
will_brown 12y ago
As Google continues to develop vertical search engines they are naturally flirting with anti-trust issues. We already saw a pre-cursor to this with Google Flights, even though the Justice Department cleared Google's acquisition there were significant conditions Google had to concede [1]. Here Google's insurance product will go far beyond Google Flights in terms of anti-trust issues. Moreover, it would be like Google Flights if Google: 1.) directly sold airline tickets on behalf of airlines (instead of linking you to where you can buy tickets); and 2.) if Google owned its own airline. The other issue, which many have touched on, down the road is the potential conflict of interest, if simultaneously a driver owns a Google self-driving car and Google is the insurer. That said health insurance companies are acquiring hospitals and physician owned practices in record numbers, and while I see an inherit conflict of interest there is apparently no regulations in place prohibiting this practice. Do consumers really want the manufacturer of a self-driving car to be the same company who might be determining liability on an insurance claim? [1]http://www.wired.com/2011/04/google-ita/ http://www.wired.com/2011/04/google-ita/
datashovel 12y ago
"Carney says Google may also face resistance from insurance companies that are reluctant to share information that could help Google compete with them someday." Dear insurance companies. Don't flatter yourselves. Google is already light years ahead of you.
- blumkvist 12y ago
  Ahead of them in what regard, exactly? Daily active users to the site?
  - datashovel 12y ago
    The context of the quote from the article has to do with speculation that Google will one day want to start their own insurance company to become a direct competitor in the insurance business.
magicalist 12y ago
People seem to be speculating well beyond what's in this article. It looks much more like they're just going to have a site for selling insurance, not becoming an insurance company. It looks like just more of their credit card comparison thing: https://www.google.com/compare/creditcard https://www.google.com/compare/creditcard
- datashovel 12y ago
  The article does speculate that insurance companies might be worried that Google would one day want to start their own insurance company.
- isaacdl 12y ago
  Wow, thanks for the link to that credit card comparison! I've never seen it before, but that's really cool. Why do they provide this as a service/how does it help them?
  - sndp 12y ago
    Paid placement and/or referrals. The "Why these cards?" link explains: "We are compensated by some of these issuers. Card features, performance and user interest are used to sort these cards."
  - mtmail 12y ago
    Money is a driver. Google can either take 1 USD) per click or 5 dollar from the credit card companies. They're cutting out the middle man, other comparison websites. I wouldn't think they do it for the benefit of users or because users asked for the service. ) I don't know that the current adsense price for query term on credit cards is
    - heroh 12y ago
      more like $60 - $180 per credit card signup + $$ for just getting people to apply. Given the high volume of traffic Google can drive, I'm sure they'll get the best commissions from banks. It looks like the commission is all they're after too, since it's not possible to sort by things like 'Sign Up Bonus', which would be useful to consumers.
chrishawes 12y ago
I found my car insurance using Google's comparison tool. It was much slicker and easier to use than the other comparison sites.
heydenberk 12y ago
Insurance could be a killer feature of self-driving cars. Imagine a self-driving car that came with a $0 5-year collision insurance policy.
dreamdu5t 12y ago
I'm amazed at the attitude towards insurance companies in this thread... that they shouldn't be able to charge you based on what they consider risk... People act as if insurance companies exist to just give you free money.
stickydink 12y ago
Google UK has been providing comparison services [1] for car insurance, travel insurance, credit cards, mortgages and bank accounts, for years now. Comparison sites are pretty big in the UK [2,3,4], more so than I have noticed since I've been here in the US. They are generally give the same sort of price; and all take the same sort of inputs. But I personally always found Google's lack of clutter, in-your-face branding and simplicity to make it my favorite. Though it's not really advertised, and almost everybody I have mentioned it to has never heard of it. [1] http://google.co.uk/compare http://google.co.uk/compare [2] http://comparethemarket.com http://comparethemarket.com [3] http://confused.com http://confused.com [4] http://moneysupermarket.com http://moneysupermarket.com

52 points by denzil_correa 12y ago

"We determined your sleeping schedule based on your computer and mobile usage. Since you are below the recommended hours suggested and may be tired behind the wheel, we are raising your rate 40% effective immediately."

lerchmo 12y ago
Or, our self driving car can cut your premiums in half!

Puts 12y ago

There will probably be a lot of resistance towards self-driving cars from insurance companies as the issue of responsibility becomes much more complicated, so It's probably a good idea for Google to get some influence in this business.

robg 12y ago

Really interesting to consider how self-driving cars will enable lower insurance rates.

zstiefler 12y ago

This seems like a no-brainer for Google. In fact, I would expect them to offer own insurance directly in the near future, for several reasons. First, insurance is one of the big practical hurdles facing their self-driving cars – in an accident, who is at fault? By offering their own product they can potentially circumvent this hurdle. Second, if they begin to offer homeowners insurance, they can tie their rates directly to Nest data, which should allow them to offer more competitive rates and more accurate pricing, similar to what Progressive has done with Snapshot [0]. And lastly, this obviously gives Google access to more, and potentially better, personal data. [0] http://www.progressive.com/auto/snapshot/ http://www.progressive.com/auto/snapshot/

fiatmoney 12y ago

- Adwords for insurance are among the most expensive. Makes total sense for them to take a cut of that market. - There's a huge difference between quote aggregation / marketing / sales, and the actual underwriting / pricing. The prior is far less regulated than the latter. - This has nothing to do with self-driving cars.

mslate 12y ago

As it happened with plane tickets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software), it is happening with car insurance. Insurance is the most expensive vertical in terms of CPC (http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords) simply because it's a very high-margin business and the market for car insurance leads is very hot. The most successful participants in the car insurance leads marketplace (and any leads marketplace TBH) do things that are inherently consumer-unfriendly to achieve as high margins as they do. Will Google do those things? No. So will Google see as much to gain from cutting out these players as they would from allowing these players to pay for AdWords? Eh, we’ll see. Self-driving cars are far, far off, leaving billions of retail dollars on the table between now and then.

toomuchtodo 12y ago
> Self-driving cars are far, far off, leaving billions of retail dollars on the table between now and then. 5-7 years is far, far off?
- mslate 12y ago
  Yes, yes it is--but your off-hand estimate does not do the situation any justice.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    My "off-hand estimate" is from multiple sources: http://www.wired.com/2015/01/rode-500-miles-self-driving-car-saw-future-boring/ http://www.wired.com/2015/01/rode-500-miles-self-driving-car... http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-on-the-future-of-driving-2014-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-on-the-future-of-dr... http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/22/6828161/california-permits-self-driving-cars-google-audi-mercedes-benz http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/22/6828161/california-permits... The idea of you driving your car is essentially dead. Vehicle miles driven per year is already stagnent due to boomers retiring and millennials not having the same inclination for cars as generations past have. Passenger cars sit idle 95% of the time. Its not going to take many autonomous vehicles to replace the current fleet with existing utilization so low.

chollida1 12y ago

This could be a touchy subject for Google. Larry Page always joked that they could start a successful hedge fund with the knowledge people hand them every day. If Google starts aggregating their data to sell insurance I can see people moving away from some of their services. Imagine if your health insurance provider had access to your emails, search history and web queries before deciding if they wanted to provide you with insurance or not...... If they just aggregate quotes from brokers to show to people then I can't see a problem with it. The people who loose out on the adwords revenue, however, might disagree:)

toomuchtodo 12y ago
> Imagine if your health insurance provider had access to your emails, search history and web queries before deciding if they wanted to provide you with insurance or not...... I'm fine with this. With the Affordable Care Act, insurers aren't able to decline you due to preexisting conditions. And previously, they would be able to cancel your policy for medical issues you hid from them. Its already illegal for insurers to discriminate against you based on your genetic profile. What's the concern?
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago
  Google (probably) knows my sexual orientation, number and frequency of partners, if I'm trying to get pregnant, if I'm self-treating anything, if I'm hiding anything, if I drive recklessly, if I've settled car accidents under the table, etc. Some of these are not protected even under the ACA or other regulations, which may not survive in their current form for very long. There's a lot more to discriminate against when you have total information awareness of a person. Most of it surprisingly legal. As a google search engine user, chrome user, android user, and web dev - I imagine google's picture of me is and highly invasive and creepily accurate. This is bothersome privacy violation and a major competitive advantage against other potential insurers.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Keep in mind the whole point of insurance is shared, proportional risk. Is it both simultaneously the Wrong Thing for an insurance company to use all available information to make an informed decision, and the Right Thing for a person to put on airs to appear less statistically risky than they actually are? Bluntly, this quacks like an argument for deception for personal gain (via lower premiums). Granted we can talk about insurance companies being shady, but even a completely honest one would, say, rightly raise your rates after an accident.

will_brown 12y ago

As Google continues to develop vertical search engines they are naturally flirting with anti-trust issues. We already saw a pre-cursor to this with Google Flights, even though the Justice Department cleared Google's acquisition there were significant conditions Google had to concede [1]. Here Google's insurance product will go far beyond Google Flights in terms of anti-trust issues. Moreover, it would be like Google Flights if Google: 1.) directly sold airline tickets on behalf of airlines (instead of linking you to where you can buy tickets); and 2.) if Google owned its own airline. The other issue, which many have touched on, down the road is the potential conflict of interest, if simultaneously a driver owns a Google self-driving car and Google is the insurer. That said health insurance companies are acquiring hospitals and physician owned practices in record numbers, and while I see an inherit conflict of interest there is apparently no regulations in place prohibiting this practice. Do consumers really want the manufacturer of a self-driving car to be the same company who might be determining liability on an insurance claim? [1]http://www.wired.com/2011/04/google-ita/ http://www.wired.com/2011/04/google-ita/

datashovel 12y ago

"Carney says Google may also face resistance from insurance companies that are reluctant to share information that could help Google compete with them someday." Dear insurance companies. Don't flatter yourselves. Google is already light years ahead of you.

blumkvist 12y ago
Ahead of them in what regard, exactly? Daily active users to the site?
- datashovel 12y ago
  The context of the quote from the article has to do with speculation that Google will one day want to start their own insurance company to become a direct competitor in the insurance business.

magicalist 12y ago

People seem to be speculating well beyond what's in this article. It looks much more like they're just going to have a site for selling insurance, not becoming an insurance company. It looks like just more of their credit card comparison thing: https://www.google.com/compare/creditcard https://www.google.com/compare/creditcard

datashovel 12y ago
The article does speculate that insurance companies might be worried that Google would one day want to start their own insurance company.
isaacdl 12y ago
Wow, thanks for the link to that credit card comparison! I've never seen it before, but that's really cool. Why do they provide this as a service/how does it help them?
- sndp 12y ago
  Paid placement and/or referrals. The "Why these cards?" link explains: "We are compensated by some of these issuers. Card features, performance and user interest are used to sort these cards."
- mtmail 12y ago
  Money is a driver. Google can either take 1 USD) per click or 5 dollar from the credit card companies. They're cutting out the middle man, other comparison websites. I wouldn't think they do it for the benefit of users or because users asked for the service. ) I don't know that the current adsense price for query term on credit cards is
  - heroh 12y ago
    more like $60 - $180 per credit card signup + $$ for just getting people to apply. Given the high volume of traffic Google can drive, I'm sure they'll get the best commissions from banks. It looks like the commission is all they're after too, since it's not possible to sort by things like 'Sign Up Bonus', which would be useful to consumers.

chrishawes 12y ago

I found my car insurance using Google's comparison tool. It was much slicker and easier to use than the other comparison sites.

heydenberk 12y ago

Insurance could be a killer feature of self-driving cars. Imagine a self-driving car that came with a $0 5-year collision insurance policy.

dreamdu5t 12y ago

I'm amazed at the attitude towards insurance companies in this thread... that they shouldn't be able to charge you based on what they consider risk... People act as if insurance companies exist to just give you free money.

stickydink 12y ago

Google UK has been providing comparison services [1] for car insurance, travel insurance, credit cards, mortgages and bank accounts, for years now. Comparison sites are pretty big in the UK [2,3,4], more so than I have noticed since I've been here in the US. They are generally give the same sort of price; and all take the same sort of inputs. But I personally always found Google's lack of clutter, in-your-face branding and simplicity to make it my favorite. Though it's not really advertised, and almost everybody I have mentioned it to has never heard of it. [1] http://google.co.uk/compare http://google.co.uk/compare [2] http://comparethemarket.com http://comparethemarket.com [3] http://confused.com http://confused.com [4] http://moneysupermarket.com http://moneysupermarket.com