Like many in Silicon Valley, Google's founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page believe that ignorance is never bliss.

That is why the founding principle of Google, the most successful technology company on the planet, is to make the world's information universally accessible and useful. In particular Mr Brin and Mr Page have always had an interest in health data, believing that if people were better informed about diseases and how to prevent them, and researchers and doctors were given more powerful computational tools, the world would be a better place.

The massive profits from Google's search engine advertising business have allowed them to invest many millions of dollars in health research via the company's philanthropic arm Google.org . The charity has invested more than $100 million dollars in a variety of projects under such headings as "predict and prevent" and "inform and empower".

Typical is an annual grant of $5 million to help to establish a non-profit organisation focused on improving early detection, preparedness, and response to global health threats. In a more concrete way, Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data — people searching for flu cures, for example — to estimate flu activity in the US up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.

Google has also invested, perhaps more controversially, in 23andme , a commercial personal genetics company set up by Mr Brin's wife, Anne Wojcicki, and her partner Linda Avey in 2006.

Like Google's founders, they believe that self-knowledge is power, that if you know more about your genetic make-up then you are in a better position to make good choices about your health. By collecting genome data, the company also aims "to build a powerful, diverse, and ever-growing resource for research that combines advances in genetic analysis with the power of the internet".

These principles became personal for Mr Brin last year when he discovered that he had inherited from his mother a mutation of a gene called LRRK2 that appears to give carriers an increased chance of developing Parkinson's Disease. He found out when he had his genes tested by 23andme.

When he announced the discovery in a personal blog, many were surprised that such a private man would make such a public statement but for Mr Brin, genetics is a database and computing puzzle to be solved in the open.

Of course, it is also true that Mr Brin's support for his wife's company undoubtedly gives 23andme a higher profile than might be expected. The couple have made a formidable publicity machine in the past with "spit parties" involving the great and the good. Free 23andme kits were handed out at Davos last year to the world's economic elite.

Time magazine named the Personal Genome Service from 23andMe, as its 2008 invention of the year, citing its exceptional work in making personal genomics accessible and affordable.

Google itself has been taking steps into commercialising health data.

It offer the Google Health service where users can create their own health profile, including prescriptions and medical history, and allow health providers such as hospitals and doctors to import health records directly. In a recent new feature, users can choose to share the information with family or others.

Some have worried about the the privacy implications and Google has said that it will never sell the information in people's profiles. But collecting such anonymised data may have money-making potential in the future — biotech and health care are already multibillion-dollar industries and are growing rapidly. Genetic databases are also potentially very valuable.

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