Google founders see a brave new world of data-driven health care
Self-driving cars are just the beginning for the pair that want to do to health care what they did to search, if they can survive the regulations
When Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, sat down for a rare frank and open chat with the veteran technology venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, they admitted, among other things, that Google was interested in health care but scared of its intense regulation.
Page and Brin displayed their quite different personalities: Brin, the maverick and head of Google X - the company's semi-secret facility dedicated to making major technological advancements - and Page, the business-focused executive now CEO.
The dynamic duo have been together for 16 years, and described their relationship as a bit like an old married couple. "You don't get agitated about one little thing or another," said Brin. "We work through it."
Google started on the desktop with search but the company has rapidly expanded into other computing areas including mobile devices with Android smartphones and tablets, the new Android Wear smartwatches and Google Glass smartglasses.
For Brin and Page, computers and mobile devices just aren't efficient uses of time at the moment.
"I think the actual amount of knowledge you get out of your computer versus the amount of time you spend with it is still pretty bad. So I think our job is to solve that, and most of the things we're doing make sense in that context," Brin said.