Paging Dr. Google, please call the front desk

My BloggingStock's colleague Jonathan Berr mentioned Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) advertising merits in a post recently. Search for "health care costs" on Google News and you're likely to see an advertisement for Michael Moore's "Sicko" film that lambasts the U.S. healthcare industry.

Is Google trying to sway results here into some political corner? Doubtful to me -- Google's function is solely to organize information into the most relevant form possible, and right now, I'd think the term "health care costs" and the new film Sicko are pretty relevant to each other. But, Google may have more ready soon in terms of really being a connector of medical information outside of a loose news connection based on computer algorithms.

Google Health is apparently herding together medical experts to advise it on medical matters as it makes a charge into organizing medicinal information on its search engine into a friendlier (and solution-providing?) format. Search for "diabetes" on Google and you'll already be presented with top-of-the-search-results listings for symptoms, tests and treatments. Many other medical conditions follow the same lead here. Is Google trying to step in and be a medical intermediary before you visit the doctor's office?

I think that goes without saying. More and more people I know use Google to research medical conditions before they start trying to make appointments. A world populace armed with a new empowerment to use information can be incredibly strong I think. Google's vision to "organize the world's information" has never been more true if the search leader thinks it can become a medical adviser (of sorts), and it gets, then, out of the "information organization" field and into the "solutions provider" field in a way. I'm not sure that is the best strategy for Google, but I'm for it anyway.