According to the latest reports, Google has once again returned to the original point-rethinking its medical strategy. According to Business Insider’s first report, the technology giant is disbanding its single, unified Google Health department established in 2018 to support the development of health products in a distributed manner.
Google’s AI director Jeff Dean said that David Feinberg, the head of the Google Health department, will leave the company, and some employees of the Google Health department will be sent to other Google teams such as search and Fitbit to engage in specific services.
This is a chaotic change of an already very chaotic plan. Tech giants such as Google and Apple have shown increasing interest in the healthcare industry in recent years, but have failed to make progress in such a fragmented ecosystem.
As we’ve broadened our work in health across Google (Search, Cloud, YouTube, Fitbit, …), we have decided to move some @GoogleHeath teams closer to product areas to help with execution while nurturing some earlier stage products and research efforts. https://t.co/v0qS1R453v
— Jeff Dean (@🏡) (@JeffDean) August 23, 2021
Google’s efforts in the health field are at least completely different, covering everything from Android fitness apps, artificial intelligence eye disease detectors, bad data transactions, medical research apps, Nest Hub’s sleep tracking function to machine learning tools for clinicians, and so on.
Google Health should have unified these efforts to provide some sense of purpose and direction for the company’s huge ambitions. Although the brand dates back to 2006, Google seems to have embarked on a more serious path in 2018, when it hired Feinberg, a highly respected healthcare executive.
As recent news has shown, although the Google Health brand will continue to exist, it has not worked. As Dean said on Twitter- Google Health is no longer just a team, but a major company-wide effort involving many of our products. In the future, the name Google Health will cover all our health initiatives.
