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Comment by grondilu | Hacker News Reader

IMHO that's sad, really. If they focus on things like that, it either means that they feel they don't have much more to bring in their original activity (A.I., networks and computer science), or that they have lost interest in these subjects and want to focus more on "saving lives". Kind of like Bill Gates and his philanthropic activity post-Microsoft.

Philanthropy is nice and all, but that's not why I'm interested in tech companies.

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Or they see a better ROI.

The entire world's population is aging and death by accident is becoming more and more rare.

Health care can essentially become an inelastic good, if you can decrease the entry price you will pick up more and more customers.

If you do it right you can get customers for life and then use your product to extend their life.

Not to mention the rich people that fund this can rationalize away the existential problem.

But big pharma companies have existed before Google. I was not interested in them and I don't want Google/Alphabet turn into one of them. If they focus on healthcare, they're doing something completely different which is of no interest to me. As a shareholder of Alphabet, I feel this is some kind of a treason.

You are aware of the share structure of Alphabet?

It was designed at the outset (the IPO of Google) to reduce the power of ordinary shareholders.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/10/29/is-a-vote-a...

http://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2015/08/12/googles-multi-class-stoc...

I haven't looked at the details as I had not much illusions about it anyway. I was a shareholder before the split and I did not bother selling after it. Maybe I should, and as I said that's sad.

I edited my comment at about the same time you posted this, the closely held voting class control was also an aspect of the previous structure.

Yeah I was vaguely aware that I had not much voting rights. That's what I meant by saying that I had not much illusions about it. Google is such a cool company that I thought I should own some shares anyway. But if it turns into a healthcare company, I'll get rid of them.

That is great! Shareholders never make great decisions, but only look at the profits. So this means that Larry and Sergey have more freedom to do what they want without primarily looking at profits. I sincerely hope that they go for the "alternative" approach and study the docters that get amazing results. I suggest to start with Dr Mark Hyman, Dr David Perlmutter and Dr Dale Bredesen.

Yes, you can very much look at this as the owners of the tech company taking money out of it and doing something else with it. Google the tech company is hugely profitable, this is not a weird thing for them to do.

My view is somewhat different. Ultimately, all the progress in technology is to make us live better lives, and to accomplish more of what we aim to accomplish. Transportation, energy, computation, etc., are all trying to accomplish the same. Most of these are external to us till now, and we are at the cusp of integrating them into ourselves. I can see why companies are investing significant amount in that regards. 100 years down the line, that's where most of our technology will be used.

> Ultimately, all the progress in technology is to make us live better lives.

Is it, really? That sounds very naive to me.

What else do you think technology is for?

Is the distinction really as black-and-white as you suggest?

One example: Flatiron (Google Ventures' biggest health tech investment, if I'm not mistaken) is often described as 'Google for cancer data.' In fact, their mission is "organizing the world's real-world oncology data."

Perhaps the owners are looking for a 'fountain of youth' for themselves, and simply directing some of Googles resources in that direction.

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