Consumer Rules... not efficiency... not information...

In this digital era where with the widespread of the internet and the connectivity among databases many platforms emerge in order to provide solutions for current consumer needs... and who is better to forecast or estimate this needs that the King of the information Itself... Google... Google developed and acquired successfully many business to complement its existing business model and to provide better service/ tools for its loyal consumers... Such is the case of broad services such as G Chat, Gmail, Gnews, Gimages, Google finance among many others and the specific ones... google analytics, adplanners, search optimization tools etc... But this time the news hit around for missing the consumer need and developing a Platform that consumers don't really need it or information that consumers don't want to search. Google Health was launched 3 years ago allowing users to track their health related information, prescription, history allowing them to plan ahead saving costs and adding efficiency... Google just announced this week that they are shutting down the service by January 2013 due to consumer lack of adoption to the service... So, even the biggest owner of consumer information still missed in developing a product? Coming from a marketing background it is very important to identify that yes, consumer research and data are key to successful product development, but also its to spend a day in the life of the consumer... With all the insecurity lately around the web who wants to have a file with all your history of diseases and prescriptions? What if those get stolen and everybody can know about them? Just remember how confidential information got spread out in the web with wikileaks... imagine your personal disease/ problems been spread out in the web and anybody can just google you and know your medical history? Is there a real need for this product? Or is it maybe a security concern and maybe the web is not so secure yet? It will be interesting to see now with the big success of Clouds if people upload their medical information to an external database...

The web is till evolving and more information is becoming available for all... but been in a consumers show for a day should save us a lot of research in product development.