Google Health: what happened, and why it shut down

Google Health was a personal health record service announced in 2008 that let people gather their medical history, prescriptions and test results in one Google account, import them from partner hospitals and pharmacies, and share them with doctors. Few people did. Google announced the closure in June 2011, switched the service off on 1 January 2012 and deleted the data a year later.

Timeline [edit]

2008

20 May 2008 Launch

Google Health opens to the public

Partners include the Cleveland Clinic, Walgreens and Quest.

2010

15 September 2010 Version

Redesign adds wellness and fitness tracking

2011

24 June 2011 Shutdown announced

Google announces the retirement

Alongside Google PowerMeter.

2012

1 January 2012 Shutdown

The service stops

Downloads stay open for a year.

2013

1 January 2013 other

Remaining records are deleted

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Google said on 24 June 2011 that Google Health had not had the broad impact it hoped for and was used mostly by a small number of tech-savvy patients and fitness enthusiasts. The service stopped on 1 January 2012 and records could be downloaded until 1 January 2013, after which they were deleted.

Our analysis: A personal health record only works if the data arrives by itself, and in 2008 it did not. Hospitals and insurers in the United States kept records in systems that did not talk to each other, the partners Google signed up covered a fraction of patients, and most people were left typing in their own prescriptions, which nobody does twice. There was also no reason to trust an advertising company with a diagnosis. Microsoft HealthVault, launched a year earlier, had the same problem and lasted longer only because Microsoft was more patient. Google came back to health a decade later through hospitals and devices rather than a website for patients.

History [edit]

Your chart, in a Google account

Google had been talking about health records since 2006, and on 20 May 2008 it opened Google Health to everyone in the United States. The idea was a patient-owned record: you logged in, added conditions, medications, allergies and test results, and linked partners such as the Cleveland Clinic, Walgreens, CVS, Quest Diagnostics and Beth Israel Deaconess so that data flowed in automatically. Doctors could be given access; Google promised not to sell the data or show adverts against it.

The early partner list looked impressive and the press treated it as the start of something. It was the year Microsoft had launched HealthVault, and the two were expected to fight over a new market.

Nobody filled it in

The market did not appear. Most American health records were in hospital systems that had no interface to Google, so for most users the import buttons did nothing and the record stayed empty unless you typed it yourself. People who were well had no reason to bother and people who were ill had other things to do. Google added features, including fitness tracking and a redesign in 2010, and the user base stayed small.

On 24 June 2011, in the same post that closed Google PowerMeter, Google said Health would be retired: it had reached a few tech-savvy patients and fitness enthusiasts but not the wide audience it was meant for. The service stopped on 1 January 2012. Users could download their records, or move them to Microsoft HealthVault, until 1 January 2013, when Google deleted everything.

The domain today

google.com/health now describes Google's later health work, from Fitbit to hospital AI, none of which is a patient-facing record. HealthVault, the rival, was itself closed by Microsoft in November 2019.

Last verified: 22 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).

Google Health

Timeline [edit]

The site through time

Ownership [edit]