Google Wants to Sell You Auto Insurance

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/08/google-wants-to-sell-you-auto-insurance/

by denzil_correa • 12 years ago

52 46 12 years ago

blogs.wsj.com

"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• 12 years ago

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

Puts• 12 years ago

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.

robg• 12 years ago

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

zstiefler• 12 years ago

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/

fiatmoney• 12 years ago

- 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.

mslate3• 12 years ago

As it happened with plane tickets (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) 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.

toomuchtodo5• 12 years ago

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?

mslate3• 12 years ago

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

josephjrobison• 12 years ago

Yes, it's only a matter of time before Google moves into mortgages, attorneys, and hosting. Which in some ways could be ok if done right. There was some dissent when they moved into flights, but I'm starting to like their flight search as much as Kayak's if not more.

It could be beneficial to the user if Google helps to use it's ranking and review algorithm to help choose the best items for complicated products with tons of variables. They have the algorithm brains, why not apply it to other markets?

Would I rather choose from the 3 attorneys who paid the most to be at the top of the paid search ads, or have Google show me 10 based on their ranking?

pozzy• 12 years ago

This is on point.

This will likely be good for consumers and only hurt middlemen who sell leads like Bankrate.com

chollida1• 12 years ago

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:)

toomuchtodo5• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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.

logn• 12 years ago

Are you actually fine with that or you just don't see how it can be used to negatively impact you?

And I'm not sure this info is harmless anyhow. It's a giant piece of legislation with probable loopholes. Plus it's not a static piece of law/regulation. And all of these companies share data.

datashovel4• 12 years ago

In my opinion insurance companies should not be profit centers like they have become. They have a real social function to spread out risk across large population. With the information Google could leverage, my hunch is they could run a very tight ship where the insurance company could (theoretically) consistently remain a healthy company at zero profit margin.

Not to say that would be their goal if they started an insurance company, but once technology catches up and perfects what insurance companies do, the only differentiator at that point is monthly premiums.

dougk16• 12 years ago

Or even take it a step further and just make it an "a posteriori" public service. Instead of auto insurance, tally up the costs of all auto-related damages at the end of each year and everyone pays their demographically-/driving-history-weighted portion through their tax return. You're right, there's really no reason for anyone to profit from distributing risk.

pdabbadabba• 12 years ago

Much of the conversation in this thread seems to be quite unmoored from the content of the article. Everyone here seems to think that Google is interested in becoming an insurer. But all Google is going today is creating a portal to resell insurance from existing providers.

Sure, Google could eventually decide to become an insurer itself, but that strikes me as quite a leap from offering vertical search for auto insurance policies, and one they have shown no interest in taking.

will_brown• 12 years ago

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/

datashovel4• 12 years ago

"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• 12 years ago

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

datashovel4• 12 years ago

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.

magicalist• 12 years ago

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

datashovel4• 12 years ago

The article does speculate that insurance companies might be worried that Google would one day want to start their own insurance company.

isaacdl• 12 years ago

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?

sndp• 12 years ago

Paid placement and/or referrals. The "Why these cards?" link explains:

"We are compensated by some of these issuers. Card features, performance and user interest are used to sort these cards."

mtmail• 12 years ago

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

dice• 12 years ago

Google's tool is new to me as well, but it doesn't seem to be very good for comparing card rewards programs. I like the nerdwallet site for that: http://www.nerdwallet.com/

bkrishnan• 12 years ago

Why can't I see it from PA? http://imgur.com/XNs0hpc

chrishawes• 12 years ago

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

heydenberk• 12 years ago

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.

dreamdu5t• 12 years ago

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.

stickydink• 12 years ago

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

[2] http://comparethemarket.com

[3] http://confused.com

[4] http://moneysupermarket.com

Google Wants to Sell You Auto Insurance

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