
Google Wants to Sell You Auto Insurance - denzil_correa
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/08/google-wants-to-sell-you-auto-insurance/
======
markcerqueira
"We determined your sleeping schedule based on your computer and mobile usage.
Since you are below the recommended hours suggested and may be tired behind
the wheel, we are raising your rate 40% effective immediately."

~~~
lerchmo
Or, our self driving car can cut your premiums in half!

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magicalist
People seem to be speculating well beyond what's in this article. It looks
much more like they're just going to have a site for selling insurance, not
becoming an insurance company.

It looks like just more of their credit card comparison thing:
[https://www.google.com/compare/creditcard](https://www.google.com/compare/creditcard)

~~~
isaacdl
Wow, thanks for the link to that credit card comparison! I've never seen it
before, but that's really cool. Why do they provide this as a service/how does
it help them?

~~~
mtmail
Money is a driver. Google can either take 1 USD _) per click or 5 dollar from
the credit card companies. They 're cutting out the middle man, other
comparison websites. I wouldn't think they do it for the benefit of users or
because users asked for the service.

_) I don't know that the current adsense price for query term on credit cards
is

~~~
heroh
more like $60 - $180 per credit card signup + $$ for just getting people to
apply. Given the high volume of traffic Google can drive, I'm sure they'll get
the best commissions from banks.

It looks like the commission is all they're after too, since it's not possible
to sort by things like 'Sign Up Bonus', which would be useful to consumers.

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chollida1
This could be a touchy subject for Google. Larry Page always joked that they
could start a successful hedge fund with the knowledge people hand them every
day.

If Google starts aggregating their data to sell insurance I can see people
moving away from some of their services.

Imagine if your health insurance provider had access to your emails, search
history and web queries before deciding if they wanted to provide you with
insurance or not......

If they just aggregate quotes from brokers to show to people then I can't see
a problem with it. The people who loose out on the adwords revenue, however,
might disagree:)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Imagine if your health insurance provider had access to your emails, search
> history and web queries before deciding if they wanted to provide you with
> insurance or not......

I'm fine with this. With the Affordable Care Act, insurers aren't able to
decline you due to preexisting conditions. And previously, they would be able
to cancel your policy for medical issues you hid from them. Its already
illegal for insurers to discriminate against you based on your genetic
profile.

What's the concern?

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Google (probably) knows my sexual orientation, number and frequency of
partners, if I'm trying to get pregnant, if I'm self-treating anything, if I'm
hiding anything, if I drive recklessly, if I've settled car accidents under
the table, etc. Some of these are not protected even under the ACA or other
regulations, which may not survive in their current form for very long.

There's a lot more to discriminate against when you have total information
awareness of a person. Most of it surprisingly legal. As a google search
engine user, chrome user, android user, and web dev - I imagine google's
picture of me is and highly invasive and creepily accurate. This is bothersome
privacy violation and a major competitive advantage against other potential
insurers.

~~~
Karunamon
Keep in mind the whole point of insurance is shared, proportional risk.

Is it both simultaneously the Wrong Thing for an insurance company to use all
available information to make an informed decision, and the Right Thing for a
person to put on airs to appear less statistically risky than they actually
are?

Bluntly, this quacks like an argument for deception for personal gain (via
lower premiums).

Granted we can talk about insurance companies being shady, but even a
completely honest one would, say, rightly raise your rates after an accident.

~~~
Thrymr
> Keep in mind the whole point of insurance is shared, proportional risk.

The fundamental problem is that the more information is brought to bear on the
idea of "risk", the less shared it is. This is especially stark in health
insurance: do you have family history of serious diseases? Do you carry a
particular gene? Do you engage in risky behavior like smoking, adventure
sports, promiscuous sex? It can price some people out of the insurance market
altogether, and make it less of a "shared" pool. This is precisely the problem
the ACA is trying (with debatable success) to tackle.

Auto insurance is arguably more directly tied to statistically risky behavior
rather than factors beyond your control (like genetics), but the potential is
still there. We as a society are not ready for total information awareness on
the part of our insurer. If Google offered insurance directly, could they deny
a claim based on an email you sent before or after an accident? Raise your
rates if you search for fast cars online? What's the difference between
actually risky behaviors, and behaviors that are merely correlated with higher
risk? The insurance markets are opaque enough without adding black box
algorithms working on nearly limitless data inputs.

~~~
Karunamon
The opaqueness is a feature, not a bug. With full transparent knowledge of
what goes into the risk calculation, people _will absolutely_ game the system
and ruin it for everyone else.

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mslate
As it happened with plane tickets
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software)),
it is happening with car insurance. Insurance is the most expensive vertical
in terms of CPC ([http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-
keywords](http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords)) simply
because it's a very high-margin business and the market for car insurance
leads is _very_ hot.

The most successful participants in the car insurance leads marketplace (and
any leads marketplace TBH) do things that are inherently consumer-unfriendly
to achieve as high margins as they do. Will Google do those things? No.

So will Google see as much to gain from cutting out these players as they
would from allowing these players to pay for AdWords? Eh, we’ll see.

Self-driving cars are far, far off, leaving billions of retail dollars on the
table between now and then.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Self-driving cars are far, far off, leaving billions of retail dollars on
> the table between now and then.

5-7 years is far, far off?

~~~
mslate
Yes, yes it is--but your off-hand estimate does not do the situation any
justice.

~~~
toomuchtodo
My "off-hand estimate" is from multiple sources:

[http://www.wired.com/2015/01/rode-500-miles-self-driving-
car...](http://www.wired.com/2015/01/rode-500-miles-self-driving-car-saw-
future-boring/)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-on-the-future-of-
dr...](http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-on-the-future-of-
driving-2014-10)

[http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/22/6828161/california-
permits...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/22/6828161/california-permits-self-
driving-cars-google-audi-mercedes-benz)

The idea of you driving your car is essentially dead. Vehicle miles driven per
year is already stagnent due to boomers retiring and millennials not having
the same inclination for cars as generations past have.

Passenger cars sit idle 95% of the time. Its not going to take many autonomous
vehicles to replace the current fleet with existing utilization so low.

~~~
smackfu
I would expect it to go like electric cars. Maybe in 5-10 years you will be
able to buy a high-end one, but the time to a majority having one will be
double that, at least.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If I can get a self-driving Model S on Uber whenever I want, why would I buy a
car?

~~~
smackfu
Yeah, when that day comes, it will be nice. We just disagree on how soon it
will be.

------
will_brown
As Google continues to develop _vertical search engines_ they are naturally
flirting with anti-trust issues. We already saw a pre-cursor to this with
Google Flights, even though the Justice Department cleared Google's
acquisition there were significant conditions Google had to concede [1].

Here Google's insurance product will go far beyond Google Flights in terms of
anti-trust issues. Moreover, it would be like Google Flights if Google: 1.)
directly sold airline tickets on behalf of airlines (instead of linking you to
where you can buy tickets); and 2.) if Google owned its own airline.

The other issue, which many have touched on, down the road is the potential
conflict of interest, if simultaneously a driver owns a Google self-driving
car and Google is the insurer. That said health insurance companies are
acquiring hospitals and physician owned practices in record numbers, and while
I see an inherit conflict of interest there is apparently no regulations in
place prohibiting this practice. Do consumers really want the manufacturer of
a self-driving car to be the same company who might be determining liability
on an insurance claim?

[1][http://www.wired.com/2011/04/google-
ita/](http://www.wired.com/2011/04/google-ita/)

------
chrishawes
I found my car insurance using Google's comparison tool. It was much slicker
and easier to use than the other comparison sites.

------
stickydink
Google UK has been providing comparison services [1] for car insurance, travel
insurance, credit cards, mortgages and bank accounts, for years now.

Comparison sites are pretty big in the UK [2,3,4], more so than I have noticed
since I've been here in the US. They are generally give the same sort of
price; and all take the same sort of inputs. But I personally always found
Google's lack of clutter, in-your-face branding and simplicity to make it my
favorite.

Though it's not really advertised, and almost everybody I have mentioned it to
has never heard of it.

[1] [http://google.co.uk/compare](http://google.co.uk/compare)

[2] [http://comparethemarket.com](http://comparethemarket.com)

[3] [http://confused.com](http://confused.com)

[4] [http://moneysupermarket.com](http://moneysupermarket.com)

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zstiefler
This seems like a no-brainer for Google.

In fact, I would expect them to offer own insurance directly in the near
future, for several reasons. First, insurance is one of the big practical
hurdles facing their self-driving cars – in an accident, who is at fault? By
offering their own product they can potentially circumvent this hurdle.
Second, if they begin to offer homeowners insurance, they can tie their rates
directly to Nest data, which should allow them to offer more competitive rates
and more accurate pricing, similar to what Progressive has done with Snapshot
[0]. And lastly, this obviously gives Google access to more, and potentially
better, personal data.

[0]
[http://www.progressive.com/auto/snapshot/](http://www.progressive.com/auto/snapshot/)

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datashovel
"Carney says Google may also face resistance from insurance companies that are
reluctant to share information that could help Google compete with them
someday."

Dear insurance companies. Don't flatter yourselves. Google is already light
years ahead of you.

~~~
blumkvist
Ahead of them in what regard, exactly? Daily active users to the site?

~~~
datashovel
The context of the quote from the article has to do with speculation that
Google will one day want to start their own insurance company to become a
direct competitor in the insurance business.

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fiatmoney
\- Adwords for insurance are among the most expensive. Makes total sense for
them to take a cut of that market.

\- There's a huge difference between quote aggregation / marketing / sales,
and the actual underwriting / pricing. The prior is far less regulated than
the latter.

\- This has nothing to do with self-driving cars.

------
Puts
There will probably be a lot of resistance towards self-driving cars from
insurance companies as the issue of responsibility becomes much more
complicated, so It's probably a good idea for Google to get some influence in
this business.

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dreamdu5t
I'm amazed at the attitude towards insurance companies in this thread... that
they shouldn't be able to charge you based on what they consider risk...
People act as if insurance companies exist to just give you free money.

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heydenberk
Insurance could be a killer feature of self-driving cars. Imagine a self-
driving car that came with a $0 5-year collision insurance policy.

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robg
Really interesting to consider how self-driving cars will enable lower
insurance rates.

