I try hard not to give my data to Google, for a lot of reasons. As a patient, having my healthcare provider hand my data over for them to monetize in God-knows-what ways is...undesirable.
This is where things get mixed up. EPIC is suggesting that using Google Cloud is somehow equivalent with handing data over to Google so that Google works with that data.
These are absolutely, extremely different. Assuming that Google will somehow break into your VMs or GKE clusters to get data out and monetize it is crazy, of course, but EPIC tries to suggest that.
Google is an unethical technological giant based in a major power (read: zero consequences). The data they would receive from this is extremely sensitive, and therefore lucrative. At the very least, their government would be interested in this information and they would be a good target for such interest simply because of their size and severely lacking ethical compass.
All these things taken together means it is not crazy to imagine that this is the case. If it is not the case currently, we have to assume it will be the case soon and that when it does become the case, historic data is still available. They are therefore always a bad choice.
I was actually referring to Google teaming up with Ascension to “share data”, which is what the second half of the article is about (and thus presumably related to this decision?). I don’t think Google would be so brazen to do what you’re suggesting, their typical playbook is to hide behind euphemisms and reassurances about the security and anonymity of your data, while providing no evidence of either, and then quietly profiting from it.
