Is Google a threat to e-health?

Something like 90 percent of Internet users search for health care information online. As with other searches, Google is the most popular tool. Considering how concerned people are about the privacy of their online health information, they probably wouldn’t use Google so freely if they realized Google was archiving every search they ever did and might someday turn the information over to the government, a health insurer, or a business or personal rival.

Sound paranoid? I would have agreed until recently when the company with the “do no evil” motto started collaborating with the Chinese government in censoring searches. If someone got hold of your Google health care searches they would see not only the sites you went to but all the context of what you did while there, what you wrote and received in email (if use you Gmail) and all of your other search habits.

If you are worried about the privacy of your health care information you should think hard about what you’re doing on Google.