Here’s an odd story. Google just took a $3.9 million stake in a biotech company called 23andMe Inc. The company was co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, who married Google co-founder Sergey Brin earlier this month. Other investors in the round include Genentech, MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures and New Enterprise Associates. Brin had personally loaned the company $2.6 million prior to the round. This debt was repaid after the Google investment.
The company is going to help people take DNA tests to get more information on their genetic health. The company will try to keep costs low and get information back to users as quickly as possible. We’re hearing this is a long, long way from launching.
23andMe is a privately held company developing new ways to help you make sense of your own genetic information.
Even though your body contains trillions of copies of your genome, you’ve likely never read any of it. Our goal is to connect you to the 23 paired volumes of your own genetic blueprint (plus your mitochondrial DNA), bringing you personal insight into ancestry, genealogy, and inherited traits. By connecting you to others, we can also help put your genome into the larger context of human commonality and diversity.
Toward this goal, we are building on recent advances in DNA analysis technologies to enable broad, secure, and private access to trustworthy and accurate individual genetic information. Combined with educational and scientific resources with which to interpret and understand it, your genome will soon become personal in a whole new way.
So what’s the connection with Google? No idea, yet, but these companies are now firmly in bed with each other (pun intended).
Well, nepotism really isn’t anything new as far as I can tell. I wonder if Google is going to launch Google Body, where they index the human genome and allow you to visualize your own genetic code. Hm, maybe I should file a patent on that in case someone in Google Dev is paying attention.
Ha ha – this can’t be true. As obvious a conflict of interest as can be. And for a public company like Google? Nah…
What’s the source, Mike?
Ha, I read this before you added the quote. It looks like I might be closer to correct than I orginally thought. OK, lets do a bit of back of the envelope justification here.
Google is in the business of indexing all of the worlds information. Albeit a bit cryptic, your genetic code is a piece of information. Google, thus, should be looking for companies that are working in biomed so that someday they will be able to develop products and services around searching your genetic code.
Is this a little far out? I’d say, much more than a little bit, but there is at least some weak reasoning behind this purchase.
Sammy. It’s true.
Interesting name for a biotech company (I understand the reference to the 23 chromosomes).
Sounds kind of like the incident at the world bank.
Ok, guess I should re-phrase. “It can’t be true” was just an exclamation. I mean, who would want to stir up such a hornet’s nest? I believe, last I checked, that Sergey could have pulled some cash together and sold some household stuff on Craig’s List to get the total amount together.
However justifiable the fit, the question of conflict just can’t go away. Especially as a loan re-payment was involved that benefited one of the principals at the investing company directly.
Oh well – the rich play by their own rules…
Cool, my genes will tell you what ads i will click on….holy shit!
awww, I think it’s sweet what he did. And can I shamelessly say, damn that b-tch got one hell of a catch
nice pun =)
what’s the connection? just another data dump that google wants to mine. websites, books, now dna code….
i liked the pun :p
I think google needs to calm down and give the little bears a chance to offer it some competition.
i couldnt bear not having competitivness id be so bored
__________________________________
http://www.islam4me.co.uk
As a personalized medicine physician I have to tell you. Do it yourself genetics is just as dangerous as do it yourself Light Speed. Besides we all know the consipiracy here.
http://thegenes...piracy-you.html
-Steve
http://www.theg...pa.blogspot.com
Think of a genealogy site (like Geni) with access to DNA profiles of all the people indexed. Combine that with GeneSense(tm) ad serving technology and voila, better ad targeting than you could ever imagine.
I can just see it now – College Student: “Hey, why does Youtube keep serving me ads for gay dating sites? .. It must think I have a genetic predisposition to homosexuality!… err wait…. oh shit!” (not that there is anything wrong with that
)
Heck, take that thought to the next level – what about dating sites that find you potential mates based on a combination of personality tests and genetics? Talk about a killer app. Most everyone believes there is that “perfect person” for them somewhere in the world. If you could help find him or her (or at least narrow it down some) you could offer a service saving people decades of heartache and bad dinner dates.
How much would that company be worth? Possibly more than Google itself IMHO.
totally off topic – but, the thing that’s been nibbling my cheese for a few days, is why has the largest advertsing company on the planet never advertised (officially) on TV. The annual TV ad spend is what $240 billion. you’d think they get there feet wet and try to understand the medium a little better by actually creating at least one TV spot – you something actually creative dare I say ‘artistic’? They seem to me to be the quintessential – at least Microsoft has a go. http://pladeo.wordpress.com/ please check out my new blog on web video advertising and TV commercial advertising etc, thanks
*sorry, no funding, I can’t afford PR hookers with roses and chocolates and I’m not going to cry on the phone about it…. yet :-s*
pun intended. lol.
“Steve S” said exactly what I meant… Google indexes the world’s information, and so if they can have your DNA sequence in their database, what is that but one more piece of information about you, your identity, and your habits?
Nifty idea.
“Don’t Be Evil” Sergey sure does seem to enjoy the good old fashioned sleazy business practices. Hypocrisy can sure be fun.
As far as I know one of the 23andme cofounders is Martin Varsavsky, partner with Google in the FON project…
Always the same people he
“So what’s the connection with Google? No idea, yet, but these companies are now firmly in bed with each other (pun intended).” Ewww.
Mike wants sit on coach and eat popcorn while watching Annie & Sergey’s on bed performance. “Take me Gooooogle…. Take me Google.”
Ewwwwwww….
Did you know Jerry Yang also married anthropologist?
They went to stanford.
Larry = Jerry
Filo = Page
Google = Yahoo
What’s with those double O and rry ?
Someday, Google will marry Yahoo. Ewww…
Just add it to the annals of BS slogans and mottos…
Google = ‘don’t be evil’
Fox news = ‘fair and balanced’; ‘we report you decide’
i can’t wait for genetically contextual advertising.
I own the domain GENESTER.com – I just hope this space actually emerges as a viable business so I can sell my domain for a lot! By the way, that pre-nup is probably air-tight considering that the “Loan” to his wife’s company was repaid. Otherwise, wouldn’t Sergey own 50% of his wife’s interest in the the company (23andme) too if they are married? anywhooo….any offers on Genester.com?
Agreed that the “b-tch got one hell of a catch” but surely not the reciprocal!
who cares! this company is not supposed to make any money for anyone or do anything of significance, its just a vanity project so his wife can claim to be a ceo. the funding is a rounding error. the vcs are just jumping on to legitimize the venture as a big “thank you” to google that has certainly made them insane money somewhere along the way.
the vanity corporation is just the twenty-first century version of the junior league.
I guess this makes wondering if it’s a girl or a boy at your pregnancy scan a tad old fashioned. It’s all about consumers now. Yuck.
I’d like to comment on two separate things: the viability of the biotech start-up and the viability of google being involved in it besides as an investor.
Let’s look at the things we’d need in order to make 23andMe useful:
1. Be able to accurately have the genome of a customer. We are many, many long years away from whole genome sequencing (or re-sequencing) of individuals. What they will probably do is look for SNPs using illumina or affymetrix chips, or do a partial sequencing using something similar to 454 Life Sciences (which recently got bought-out by Roche).
2. Suppose that they have the data. We don’t really have a clue as to what to what it means. We have discovered the ubiquity of copy-number variants, of regulatory regions, of siRNA and such very recently. Even if we had the genetic code of an individual we do not have the scientific knowledge to make sense of it yet.
3. Suppose we were to be able to identify all CNVs, rare SNPs, and had complete knowledge of the functional units of a genome. We still wouldn’t know how this relates to disease (for the simple reason that knowing this would require sequencing tens of thousands of human genomes in controlled studies and studying for the various diseases, which brings us back to (1) we don’t have the right technology to do this yet.)
4. We don’t know complete knowledge of disease mechanisms as they are – even if we could study their genetic basis, we wouldn’t know why there is a relationship between them.
5. Most individuals most certainly won’t know how to interpret what the results are saying. The various pitfalls, and ethical implications of how the general public takes on medical results is well studied in publich health and other medical literature.
Google’s involvement:
Google however, could be really useful in organizing worlds (biological / biomedical) knowledge on biology and providing some of its capacities and knowledge, and lift all boats. Many people working in bioinformatics are good scientists but not great software engineers, and even worse usability designers. They also lack the computing infrastructure google has. I see great potential here, but it won’t deliver the greatest amount of monetization by the current ‘adwords’ — they will have to customize for slightly different content, but this should be difficult.
Note that pharma and life sciences is a much larger industry than either software or advertising, thus there are big bucks in advertising, providing services, and market intelligence as well.
These services could range software platforms for data mining, and drug discovery, where google indexes (or hosts) multiple biological databases (for the various -omes, and other kinds) to enable these services.
Well, this is obvious! Anybody knows the Iceland-based company DECODE (www.decode.com)? They use the genomes of nearly the whole Icelandic population (300.000 inhabitants!) and are constantly cross-analyzing them for inheritary deseases and the like, thus hoping to find causes for several of these deseases + being able to find new pharmaceuticals which they can then bring to market.
For such huge databases, you also need someone who is expert in the field of database storage and manipulation such as cross-comparison of millions of genes etc…
resumed:
If this company “is trying to keep costs low” (and costs are normally everything else than low for such an in-depth-analysis), they are maybe also interested in being able to keep the genome data and use it for building up a similar Genome database to the one from Decode (although they wouldn’t be able to get hereditary information out of such a database with the genomes of random individuals…) For such a task, it would be very wise to have someone who is a database expert and can provide sophisticated search algorithms, such as Google.
(you have to do the wife’s voice like jennifer lopez in southpark’s taco flavored kisses episode)
wife: “oh sergey poo, will you fund my startup?”
serg: “no honey that would be an egregious conflict of interests”
wife: “oh come on sergey poo, don’t you want to fund mama’s little startup?”
serg: “sweetie, it’s just not appropriate for me to do something like that”
wife: “but if you don’t fund my wittle bitty startup mama’s not going to have sex with you any more”
serg: “okay, sergie poo will do it”
- 2.3 million personal money – This is like what honestly; $500 dollars to me?
-RB
Deniz’s comments are quite thoughtful, and I’d add the following.
The abysmal failure (so far) of the Human Genome Project to connect to people’s daily lives, even though it’s successful in academic (and PR) terms, is behind several below-the-radar projects. One example is SNPedia, a wiki to foster reading and discussion from an individual’s point of view on the genes (or more precisely, genotypes) with known consequences.
This actually makes sense to me because “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.â€
There is a LOT of information in your DNA. A lot.
I agree with Jason.
Darn, one day when you open the google homepage, you may find something like:
Web Images Video DNA(new) News Maps Gmail more â–¼
Creeepy!
Once again I warn that this could start to be used against you. Imagine your college application process. 1.)submit the paperwork 2.) They google you, including your genome 3.) They reject you because of your predisposition to “schizophrenia” or “Alcoholism”
I am terribly afraid of where we are headed when we don’t treat your genome with the same protections as health records…..Databasing is one thing…But I can imagine the hackers trying to get into this kinda record. It’s Not quite as benign as a MySpace profile
-Steve
http://www.theg...pa.blogspot.com
interesting assumptions made throughout these replies, many of which seem to not take into consideration what the 23andme website seems to be saying, and jump straight into the mindless google conspiracy theories (we seem to also skip over the fact that genentech has also invested in them). Steve, I’m particularly interested in your comments, especially given your fondness for other people embracing the combination of technology and genetics like Bertalan Mesko (from your blog) “whose aim is to make medicine, genetics more readable even for those who are not too interested in these” which, from what I can tell seems to relate at least in part to what 23andme states they are trying to do.
True,
I am a big fan of Bertalan’s. Here’s why. He is approaching this problem throught he eyes of a medical professional. I am ok with non-professionals’ involvement, but their leadership has led to some of the biggest disasters in US healthcare. HMOs, PPOs, length of stays/DRGs, Pharma, where do I stop? Genetics is My field, it is my passion. For most people it is a novelty, a sideshow act. This is a big problem, especially when people think genetics is fate. I.E. Discrimination, Pre-determination. These are views of the Naive and clearly ignorant (at least regarding genetics) Why am I supposed to think that a start-up (non-medical company) will have the patients’ best interests in heart. Bertalan will take the hippocratic oath in which he will swear to have the patient’s interest above his own. Did Sergey do that? What about other’s. Don’t get me wrong, these may be very noble people. I just don’t trust anyone, until I meet them and they prove it to me. Including doctors…..
-Steve
http://www.theg...pa.blogspot.com
gracias