Google did bet on healthcare once before. I don't know if you remember, but they noped out of that after about 2 years, and Microsoft noped out shortly thereafter IIRC.
Once you nope out of something so suddenly, it becomes difficult to convince the market that you're serious about it this time.
Trying to cure cancer or Alzheimer's requires actual medical research, which is a money sink at the scale Google is ill prepared to tolerate. So it'll be some kind of data management one way or another.
Google Ventures is just a VC fund. And they are funding businesses that are largely agreed to be legit enterprises.
The two examples in the article:
Foundation Medicine: sequences tumor cells to use for directing cancer treatment. There have been some high profile cases from academic research centers where this has saved lives. Roche purchased over 50% of the company last year.
Editas: Everyone in biology has heard of CRISPR. The company was founded by Zhang and Doudna, although it is now primarily a Broad company (meaning Zhang). It is led by Bosley who previously led Avila to being acquired by Celgene.
The notion that these investments are not doing "actual medical research" is ridiculous.
Pardon my question, but where is the money spent ? beside researcher's salaries ? What makes the cost so astronomical ? chemicals ? or maybe a virtually inflated cost from companies selling things at premium because they can making every lab setup a sink ? isn't there a way to improve the system by changing the views or the way work is done ?
I'm thinking about SpaceX, they started from scratch and IIRC they cut the costs by 10 (not even counting the reusable rocket game)
my understanding is that google's first foray into health was related specifically to digital health records. their current endeavors are much more broad.
Once you nope out of something so suddenly, it becomes difficult to convince the market that you're serious about it this time.