A seminal moment

By Cade Metz in San Francisco

29th February 2008

A week after Google announced that a few thousand Clevelanders will soon kick the tires on its long-awaited/long-feared online health service, a company VP with a famous nickname has provided a few extra details on how the service will actually work. And a few screenshots.

"Google Health aims to solve an urgent need that dovetails with our overall mission of organizing patient information and making it accessible and useful," Google VP Marissa Mayer writes on The Official Google Blog. "Through our health offering, our users will be empowered to collect, store, and manage their own medical records online."

Mayer goes on to tell the world why Google Health is loads better than other online health services, including Microsoft's. Naturally, she begins by discussing privacy and security.

"Due to the sensitive and personal nature of the data that will be stored in Google Health, we need to conduct our health service with the same privacy, security, and integrity users have come to expect in all our services," she says. "Google Health will protect the privacy of your health information by giving you complete control over your data. We won't sell or share your data without your explicit permission."

She does not mention a new report (PDF) from the World Privacy Forum warning that the personal health records stored by Google Health aren't protected by the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Regardless of what Mayer does or doesn't say, it's difficult to take her seriously. San Francisco Magazine has just published a feature story on Mayer, and it has chosen to call the piece "Googirl."