From the Microsoft press release Microsoft Demonstrates Further Commitment to Healthcare Market With Planned Acquisition of Web Search Company we learn
NEW ORLEANS — Feb. 26, 2007 — Microsoft Corp. today announced
that it has agreed to acquire Medstory Inc., a privately held company
based in Foster City, Calif., that develops intelligent Web search
technology specifically for health information. The acquisition
represents a strategic move for Microsoft in the consumer health search
arena and signals a long-term commitment toward the development of a
broader consumer health strategy. Medstory employees will join the
Health Solutions Group, a recently formed division at Microsoft that
will manage product development and delivery. Financial terms were not
disclosed, as part of the agreement between the organizations.
This reminds me of the post Thoughts on health care, continued from Google's Adam Bosworth which stated
As I indicated in my post last week,
I've been interested in the issue of health care and health information
for a while. I just spoke at a conference about some of the challenges
in the health care system that we at Google want to tackle. The
conference, called Connecting Americans to Their Health Care, is a gathering focused on how consumers are transforming health care through the use of personal health technologies.
This speech will give you some insight into the problems that we believe need our attention.
It is also interesting that Adam Bosworth had been billed with the title Architect, Google Health for a while. I'd once heard that the the market for medical related keywords is one of the most lucrative for search engines which may explain the interest. However if you look at the list of most expensive adwords it would seem that building a vertical search engine targetted at debt consolidation is the real goldmine. :)