98 karma · joined February 24, 2012
1. We’re in healthcare, so data privacy / security and HIPAA compliance are a must. One way to limit this problem might be by architecting it so that our data doesn’t touch your servers.
2. Support for ActiveRecord-like abstraction layers would be great. Our underlying schema is fairly gnarly due to multiple rounds of regulation-driven changes to our data model so directly querying the Postgres DB isn’t really feasible for most of the team that does basic analysis.
Pricing is fine/cheap for what it could make possible for business intelligence/analytics.
As an example from my industry (full disclosure- as cofounder of an Obamacare-only startup, I am very biased here):
Search for 'Obamacare' on Google and you'll be presented with ads for sites that do not sell actual Obamacare plans, but use misleading language suggesting they do. The goal is to bait and switch - bring people in promising Obamacare plans, and then sell them plans that pay higher commissions but do not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act such as no restrictions on preexisting conditions, coverage of maternity services, paying for hospitalizion, etc etc. This is definitely unethical (people think they are covered for e.g. hospital visits and aren't) and in some cases illegal under state insurance law, but state enforcement personnel don't have the bandwidth to audit Google ads, and Google's auditors don't appear to have the industry-specific knowledge to catch that behavior.
Given this move with bail bonds, will Google seek to more broadly enforce an ethical standard on its platform (not to mention laws)? Or is this a one off? Note that insurance is a significant portion of Google's ad revenue, whereas bail bonds are negligible.