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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.

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.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - Thrymr 12y ago
      > Keep in mind the whole point of insurance is shared, proportional risk. The fundamental problem is that the more information is brought to bear on the idea of "risk", the less shared it is. This is especially stark in health insurance: do you have family history of serious diseases? Do you carry a particular gene? Do you engage in risky behavior like smoking, adventure sports, promiscuous sex? It can price some people out of the insurance market altogether, and make it less of a "shared" pool. This is precisely the problem the ACA is trying (with debatable success) to tackle. Auto insurance is arguably more directly tied to statistically risky behavior rather than factors beyond your control (like genetics), but the potential is still there. We as a society are not ready for total information awareness on the part of our insurer. If Google offered insurance directly, could they deny a claim based on an email you sent before or after an accident? Raise your rates if you search for fast cars online? What's the difference between actually risky behaviors, and behaviors that are merely correlated with higher risk? The insurance markets are opaque enough without adding black box algorithms working on nearly limitless data inputs.
      - Karunamon 12y ago
        The opaqueness is a feature, not a bug. With full transparent knowledge of what goes into the risk calculation, people will absolutely game the system and ruin it for everyone else.
- logn 12y ago
  Are you actually fine with that or you just don't see how it can be used to negatively impact you? And I'm not sure this info is harmless anyhow. It's a giant piece of legislation with probable loopholes. Plus it's not a static piece of law/regulation. And all of these companies share data.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    > Are you actually fine with that or you just don't see how it can be used to negatively impact you? Actually fine with that. My genome is public with the Personal Genome Project, associated with my full legal name.
datashovel 12y ago
In my opinion insurance companies should not be profit centers like they have become. They have a real social function to spread out risk across large population. With the information Google could leverage, my hunch is they could run a very tight ship where the insurance company could (theoretically) consistently remain a healthy company at zero profit margin. Not to say that would be their goal if they started an insurance company, but once technology catches up and perfects what insurance companies do, the only differentiator at that point is monthly premiums.
- dougk16 12y ago
  Or even take it a step further and just make it an "a posteriori" public service. Instead of auto insurance, tally up the costs of all auto-related damages at the end of each year and everyone pays their demographically-/driving-history-weighted portion through their tax return. You're right, there's really no reason for anyone to profit from distributing risk.
pdabbadabba 12y ago
Much of the conversation in this thread seems to be quite unmoored from the content of the article. Everyone here seems to think that Google is interested in becoming an insurer. But all Google is going today is creating a portal to resell insurance from existing providers. Sure, Google could eventually decide to become an insurer itself, but that strikes me as quite a leap from offering vertical search for auto insurance policies, and one they have shown no interest in taking.

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.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - Thrymr 12y ago
    > Keep in mind the whole point of insurance is shared, proportional risk. The fundamental problem is that the more information is brought to bear on the idea of "risk", the less shared it is. This is especially stark in health insurance: do you have family history of serious diseases? Do you carry a particular gene? Do you engage in risky behavior like smoking, adventure sports, promiscuous sex? It can price some people out of the insurance market altogether, and make it less of a "shared" pool. This is precisely the problem the ACA is trying (with debatable success) to tackle. Auto insurance is arguably more directly tied to statistically risky behavior rather than factors beyond your control (like genetics), but the potential is still there. We as a society are not ready for total information awareness on the part of our insurer. If Google offered insurance directly, could they deny a claim based on an email you sent before or after an accident? Raise your rates if you search for fast cars online? What's the difference between actually risky behaviors, and behaviors that are merely correlated with higher risk? The insurance markets are opaque enough without adding black box algorithms working on nearly limitless data inputs.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      The opaqueness is a feature, not a bug. With full transparent knowledge of what goes into the risk calculation, people will absolutely game the system and ruin it for everyone else.
logn 12y ago
Are you actually fine with that or you just don't see how it can be used to negatively impact you? And I'm not sure this info is harmless anyhow. It's a giant piece of legislation with probable loopholes. Plus it's not a static piece of law/regulation. And all of these companies share data.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > Are you actually fine with that or you just don't see how it can be used to negatively impact you? Actually fine with that. My genome is public with the Personal Genome Project, associated with my full legal name.

datashovel 12y ago

In my opinion insurance companies should not be profit centers like they have become. They have a real social function to spread out risk across large population. With the information Google could leverage, my hunch is they could run a very tight ship where the insurance company could (theoretically) consistently remain a healthy company at zero profit margin. Not to say that would be their goal if they started an insurance company, but once technology catches up and perfects what insurance companies do, the only differentiator at that point is monthly premiums.

dougk16 12y ago
Or even take it a step further and just make it an "a posteriori" public service. Instead of auto insurance, tally up the costs of all auto-related damages at the end of each year and everyone pays their demographically-/driving-history-weighted portion through their tax return. You're right, there's really no reason for anyone to profit from distributing risk.

pdabbadabba 12y ago

Much of the conversation in this thread seems to be quite unmoored from the content of the article. Everyone here seems to think that Google is interested in becoming an insurer. But all Google is going today is creating a portal to resell insurance from existing providers. Sure, Google could eventually decide to become an insurer itself, but that strikes me as quite a leap from offering vertical search for auto insurance policies, and one they have shown no interest in taking.