>>3859 Google are heavy investors because the company was co-founded by the wife of Sergey Brin. Not sure if that makes a lot of difference, but I think it makes it less /boo/ and more "fella helpin' 'is bird" kind of thing.
http://www.amazon.com/23andMe-Personal-Genome-Service-Information/product-reviews/B002QPR852 A lot of the reviews on Amazon seems to suggest shady practices when it comes to your privacy and personal information, but that could just be people being paranoid.
Having said that, it costs a few thousand pounds to sequence a genome, and they're offering it for £100. They must be making a lot of revenue somewhere, and it's most likely by selling the information they gather about you to a third party (anonymously I'm sure).
I'm looking into doing it regardless; it could be helpful to know if your more prone to some disease and need to take action to prevent it via exercise or diet.
>>3861 Of the four posts in this thread you're the only one who thinks you really can make any use of this service. What do the others know that they aren't telling us (just heavily implying)? Why can't a genome sequence tell us anything about our health?
I think other people are just weary about giving their genome/genetic information to a company who is going to analyse every single one of your genes for disease and history. Especially when they are linked to other companies who specialise in selling information about people and their habbits to third parties.
I personally can't see the big deal as long as my data is anonymous, but I can see the potential for abuse by advertisers and such if it's not.
>>3864 I have also heard some very poor reviews of their techniques and services from some geneticists I know, basically accusing their output data as being too poor to make the assertions that they do in the report they send to you, but I can't recall them in great detail so take from that what you will.
It's probably worth mentioning that it cost nearly 3bn to sequence the first genome just a few decades ago, and took researchers years. Now it costs just a few thousand, and can be complete in a few days. Personalised medicine is very much becoming a reality, and it won't be long before everyone knows their own genome and babies are sequenced at birth (think Gattaca). This may worry the more paranoid amongst us (including myself), but the advantages of this in medicine will be, and already is amazing.
There are countless drugs available right now for treatments of alzheimers and cancers, but many of the drugs react badly with individual people with particular genetic mutations. If a very promising drug has a serious/lethal side affect for just some people, then it's shelved and no one get's to use it.
By sequencing genomes, we can see your mutations, check which shelved drugs won't cause any harm, and give you a personalised treatment based on your individual genetics.
You can expect this kind of thing to start in the coming years, having (I think) already started in some places and for those who can afford to get the genome sequenced.
Not really on topic, but something I think is very interesting.
>>3864 This is what I'm asking you, or rather asking the others to justify:
>but this seems frivolous and of no real diagnostic value
>Their reasoning behind their output is a bit questionable
>you're right, probably not useful to any individual.
>>3869 Not him, but nobody needs to try hard to smear google. They are the second biggest datamining cunts after the NSA. Yes yes, it's their business model...
For me it was an informative post. As soon as I hear google is behind something, I stop using it. Same with Microsoft (I haven't used Skype since the second I heard they bought them out). Then again, I'm a Linux user who also blocks 99% of Javascript on the web, so I'm an edge case.
>>3870 >For me it was an informative post. As soon as I hear google is behind something, I stop using it.
Make up your mind. The company's ownership was mentioned in two of the three earlier posts.
I got accepted for a sperm bank and they wanted me to undertake a screening process, where I think they'd check for inheritable conditions and that kinda stuff. Do you think they'd have given me one of these tests for free?