Does Google want to buy WebMD?

Not a bad strategy for Google, since their health initiative (what was leaked, anyway) seemed very uninspired.

Plus, Google’s Manhattan offices are in the same building as WebMD’s…

Google already records all of their registered users’ search terms, so it’s no more significant than what they’re doing now. The data is only dangerous if it’s made public. (Remember the AOL fiasco last year?)

Anyways, the only question is whether Emdeon is interested in selling WebMD, since it’s not its own entity. Emdeon is a publicly traded company, and I don’t see any particular reason they’d want to sell WebMD, as WebMD is profitable. It’s got a considerable amount of mindshare, and I don’t see them giving up such a household brand so easily. They may want more than Google is willing to pay.

Google has only been interested in buying or creating content-driven services when they’ve had difficulty indexing that specific kind of data in a meaningful way (YouTube), or if it’s private data (Gmail). Video content is difficult to make searchable, which is why the YouTube purchase made sense. There are no walls at WebMD, Google can spider it with no problems, ergo they have no reason to buy it.

I would see Google buying a site like geni.com before they’d make an offer for WebMD. I’d also see Google becoming the one and only advertising partner for WebMD rather than outright buying the property. That would make more financial sense, from this armchair expert’s point of view.