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If you are like most people, you have never heard of Google Helpouts. The idea with Helpouts has been to leverage Google’s identity tools, payment technologies and online video service in order to provide web users with both free and paid advice and sessions covering a range of topics. The tag line is “Real help from real people in real time.” It meant connecting people with experts on topics when they want to learn about or seek advice and solutions to everyday challenges. Sounds like a perfect platforms for doctors to provide a new service venue for their patients.

So, when Google announced Helpouts in 2013, it was hailed as the next Google killer app, we listened and waited. Technologists, bloggers, all types of media had high expectations for the service. For health, experts called Helpouts a “seminal event” that would bring telehealth to the masses.

That didn’t happen. Eighteen months later in 2015, Helpouts was shut-down. Without much fanfare, an official announcement came from Google+ declaring that the service hadn’t “grown at the pace we had expected so it’s time to say a sad so long to the application and the community.” So, what happened? This isn’t the first time Google has pulled the plug on something – think back to Google Answer, Buzz, Glass and Wave to name a few. We can now add Helpouts to the list of deceased.

But no need to shed tears for Google. Each failure builds to the knowledge set for the next phase of ideas that could become the next thing. For Helpouts in health, the pilot gives Google key insights for what to deliver in the next evolution of digital heath.

Concept. The concept was in line with what was next with user interaction – an offering that allowed users to search on symptoms and through the magic of their algorithms, Google would not only recognize the health symptom but attempt to match you with a doctor real-time. With Helpouts, people could get personalized medical, nutritional, wellness related and health help from a provider over live video whenever they needed it.

As recorded by Gizmodo from a Google interview, when an illness symptom was searched online, a video chat callout would pop with “Based on your search query, we think you are trying to understand a medical condition. Here you can find health care providers who can visit you over video chat.” Health providers like Kaiser already use phone-based consultations today so adding video has very big potential to prevent unnecessary medical visits saving time for both patient and doctor.

Design, Test & Pilot. Big names saw the advantage to move from just seeing a one sided YouTube videos to having an interactive back and forth discussion with an expert real-time. Sephora, Rosetta Stone, Weight Watchers and One Medical Group signed up for the pilot. Helpouts was powered by Google’s Hangouts video technology using WebRTC to support interactive voice and video via browser. It was also mandatory that you have a Google+ account to sign-in and use Google Wallets to pay for the interactive service. For 18 months, it was deployed in U.S., Canada, the U.K, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia.

From a health perspective, the platform was HIPPA compliant to address privacy concerns and the providers pre-screened for credentials. Pricing for the service was determined by the provider. Unfortunately, insurance coverage could not be resolved to include in the initial trial. Health providers saw Helpouts as another channel to see patients beyond the office visit. This may be more attractive to patients with high deductibles but no major complications.

Learning from the fall. Although short-lived, Google Helpouts was right in line with what people are looking for – timely, useful and real-time connection to experts. Online knowledge marketplaces are growing and companies like Amazon and eBay all planning to build upon their online e-commerce capabilities to include an interactive aspect to their service. As their first time out in what people are calling “See-Commerce,” Google’s Helpouts didn’t quite deliver on the mark. Helpouts didn’t have enough traction to in the community – Google didn’t promote it enough and the users just didn’t have the personalized user experience as hoped. At the end of the trial, there was no Google social buzz about the offering and not enough users. The post mortem on the Helpouts focuses on three major drivers that contributed to Helpouts demise: insufficient marketing, limited revenue generation and technology disablement.

• More Marketing Required. What are Hangouts? If you’re asking this question, then you’ve hit the main reason that Google Hangouts for Health didn’t work. Although it was heavily promoted in the in initial launch, the broader public failed to understand the product. Google made a huge assumption that Helpouts would catch on because it was simply “built by Google”. No product comparison was given to compare Helpouts with Skye or FaceTime. Google provided a one minute introduction video to Helpouts and looked at the experts to do the rest of the promotions for the remainder of the 15 months. This approach is puzzling since Google is the largest search engine and is the expert on both organic and paid advertising. The question that begs to be asked is why didn’t Google aggressively list Helpouts under each search or use more targeted advertising at people searching in Google or YouTube for this kind of service? Google just proves that building something is not enough – promotion, endorsement and social marketing are all essential for surviving in the digital, which needs quite a bit of education over period of time.
• It’s About Making Money. Helpouts didn’t make enough money for its content/service providers, who is the life of the contents on this platform. Helpouts did attract users in the beginning but failed to take those initial consultations into a recurring revenue stream. One reason is that users like to do their own research online and view what experts had to say on Google’s other offering, YouTube YouTube doesn’t connect you to an expert but it gives insight for users who could research the topic and review expert videos on the topic – whether it’s accurate or not is another matter. The best part of YouTube is that it is FREE and the advertising supported revenue model encourages a huge abundance of the contents. With Helpouts, there was no advertising on the platform to generate revenue and experts had to rely on Helpouts for users to deliberately reach out the expert for a fee based service. Bottom line, Helpouts wasn’t helping the experts generating “passive” revenue through the offering and essentially died.
• User Design and Experience. The Achilles heel for Helpouts was that people could only use the service if they had a Google+ account and Google Wallet. How many of use recently posted anything on Google+ or bought anything using Google Wallet. Helpouts pushed users to adopt a technology that was new and yet to stick Helpouts was like Skype or FaceTime but different and there was general fatigue of having to yet learn another platform. Users had to learn new rules, processes and technology while trying to “learn from an expert” while the experts were also learning Helpouts. For the experts, there was more overhead work required from having to operate outside of their own practice website. Having to collaborate inside Helpouts did little to drive traffic to their own websites and attract new clients. When was last time you spent more than 1 minutes for set up before starting using it. Anything more than that, you are more likely to call your Help Desk at work.

Moreover, on their own website, experts could personalize user interactions and manage their own content strategy. Helpouts provided a one size fits all approach to online collaboration between experts and their users.

Google has a rich history of fast launches and retiring of new tools and platforms. Helpouts failed in the sense that it didn’t catch on or monetize the service to be profitable but the concept is right on track to become part of digital movement to revolutionize high value added personal content services, including doctors’ consultation sessions. Thanks to Google, we now know that for providing personalized expert services for a fee, one needs to do better in following areas:

• Marketing buzz. A marketing promotion plan needs to sustain the interests in the service and continually refine once it’s launched.
• Capture revenue. Revenue model for the content providers and clear differentiation points for the fee based services.
• Integration Ease. Integrate with existing online presence/platform for the experts so it can generate more direct impacts on the expert’s service, e.g., more patient visits.