

Google Compare Auto Insurance - zackb
https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance

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chuckup
My first thought: here's another Google offering they won't promote, and will
discontinue in a year or two. Why bother?

It reminds me of the "compare CD rates" page they had - I tried to find it
just now, but it looks like they killed it off.

But I did find this - Google Compare credit cards:

[https://www.google.com/compare/creditcard/qs#p=0](https://www.google.com/compare/creditcard/qs#p=0)

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vinkelhake
What does it matter? Are you going to invest heavily in this car insurance
comparison service? Are you worse off now that Google tries this thing out?

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lern_too_spel
Maybe he goes shopping for new car insurance every six months and can't be
bothered learning a new auto insurance comparison interface every time. This
is a big problem for the two people who do that.

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beering
It's most devastating when you've built up a community, a way of life, around
a car insurance comparison tool. Then the company pulls the plug, and even if
you can download an archive of your data, you lose a lot that of the
connections between you and your car insurance social network. That's why car
insurance comparison is best as a decentralized network, so that if one
provider goes away, you can still call the other fifty providers as usual.

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omarchowdhury
Maybe he's working on a car insurance quote comparison startup.

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lancefisher
I entered my name and number into an insurance finder once. I got calls for
years after from every insurance company imaginable. The junk mail still
comes. Never again am I giving away my personal info in a finder that passes
it on.

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jewel
It looks like they've thought of that. The link says that google generates a
google voice number specifically for the call to protect your privacy.

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hmmdar
Not sure what input I provided wrong, or if its just the services Google is
partnering with, but all the quotes provided are 2-3 times more than what I
pay now.

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kpommerenke
Same here: all quotes I got are 70% to 110% more expensive than my current
carrier, while excluding uninsured motorist coverage. Doesn't seem like a good
selection of participating carriers.

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jeremydw
I tried it. Why did they have to send me an email containing my quotes, versus
just displaying the quotes on a results page? That seems particularly un-
Googley. I hope my email address is not shared with any third parties.

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joshmn
This is how <all> the insurance aggregators do it _. I don 't have an answer
why, but this is how they all do it.

_ [https://www.thezebra.com/](https://www.thezebra.com/) <kind of> does it.

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jkoudys
I understood why they did this 9 years ago, when I first bought auto-insurance
online, but it's certainly not a technical requirement it be done this way
now. My hunch is there's some kind of regulation/agreement between insurers
that quotes not be made available on a website, and emailing the results is a
loophole.

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minthd
Currently the auto-insurance industry is moving towards usage-based-insurance
- which basically measures exactly how you drive your car and estimates your
premiums based on that. It have shown to reduce prices by around 15%(and maybe
there's more potential because it's new).

There are now enough insurance providers that support that model.And a large
fractions of consumers does show interest, but they still have some potential
issues preventing usage: fear that it might increase premiums, no way to
compare this to regular insurance, and the need to install something to get
all the data(preferably before you sign to insurance).

Google compare,coupled with all the data google potentially already have from
our phones, can solve all those - and could even be more accurate using more
data.

And long term, whoever controls this data controls the insurance market -
because if you already buy from google compare - why would you ever install
apps or but telematics hardware that collect driving data from someone else ?

So i think Google will be aggressive about that.

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texthompson
Where is this available? I checked places Austin TX, Rochester NY and Seattle
WA.

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ratsbane
Also not available in Tennessee, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Virginia.
(Those were the only states I checked)

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ivv
Insurance AdWords are among the most expensive. Insurance leads can pay
upwards of $100. Seems like Google decided to get a piece of that action.

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calbear81
Isn't that already priced into the CPCs for the insurance category?

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minthd
I think advertisers can price based only on keywords from current search and
maybe some demographics. But Google has more data that would be interesting to
insurance guys and worth money. Not sure it's implemented currently , but
probably in the plans ahead.

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dmachop
Not available in NY/NJ areas

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chriogenix
not available in hawaii

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joshmn
Checking in from Minnesota. Not here.

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BorisMelnik
nor in Florida, where I am currently living

edit: or Pennsylvania where I'll be moving soon

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shorttime
What brings you to the NE?

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BorisMelnik
contract work, I'll be in the tri-state area mainly PA/NJ/NYC for about 4
months working on getting a marketing team up to speed. glad I miss the snow,
I hope.

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abvdasker
Google Compare Auto Insurance (In California)

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ComputerGuru
Not available in Illinois, FWIW.

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Zikes
Or Arkansas.

