Google said Friday that it would retire Google Health and Google PowerMeter, neither of which achieved the critical mass that Google felt would be necessary to continue it.
In the case of Google Health, the site will remain operational until Jan. 1, 2012. From then until Jan. 1, 2013, users will not be able to use the site but will be able to download their data. Google PowerMeter, on the other hand, will be retired on Sept. 16 of this year.
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Both were based on the idea that with more and better information, people can make smarter choices, whether in regard to managing personal health and wellness, or saving money and conserving energy at home,” Aaron Brown, senior product manager of Google Health, and Bill Weihl, the Google “green energy czar,” wrote in a blog post on Friday. “While they didn’t scale as we had hoped, we believe they did highlight the importance of access to information in areas where it’s traditionally been difficult.”
Google Health went live in May 2008. >Users could log in to the service at google.com/health to import their medical records, fill prescriptions, and get lab results, set up text-based pill alerts, keep track of immunizations, and get pertinent news alerts. The last major update was in Sept. 2010, when the company revamped the site to place more of an emphasis on wellness.
“Now, with a few years of experience, we’ve observed that Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would,” Brown and Weihl wrote. “There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts. But we haven’t found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people.”
Users can download their personal information from the site in one of several formats: printable PDF, a Continuity of Care record in XML format, CSV files, HTML or XML versions, or a unified ZIP archive.
Over the coming weeks Google will also be adding the ability to directly transfer your health data to other services that support the Direct Project protocol, an emerging open standard for efficient health data exchange, the company said.
Users can still transfer and store their information in Microsoft’s HealthVault, an online data store that was launched in 2007. But Hohm, Microsoft’s alternative for homeowners to manage their energy consumption has also been refocused on the smart grid and electrical vehicles.
In PowerMeter’s case, more and more information is being made available to consumers online, as with the controversial SmartMeter from Pacific Gas & Electric.
“Momentum is building toward making energy information more readily accessible, and it’s exciting to see others drive innovation and pursue opportunities in this important new market,” Brown and Weihl wrote. “We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished with PowerMeter and look forward to what will develop next in this space.”
