Google Inc. will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that’s likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search leader. The pilot project announced Thursday will involve 1,500 to 10,000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic who volunteered to an electronic transfer of their personal health records so they can be retrieved through Google’s new service, which won’t be open to the general public.

Each health profile, including information about prescriptions, allergies and medical histories, will be protected by a password that’s also required to use other Google services such as e-mail and personalized search tools. Google views its expansion into health records management as a logical extension because its search engine already processes millions of requests from people trying to find about more information about an injury, illness or recommended treatment.

But the health venture also will provide more fodder for privacy watchdogs who believe Google already knows too much about the interests and habits of its users as its computers log their search requests and store their e-mail discussions. Prodded by the criticism, Google last year introduced a new system that purges people’s search records after 18 months. In a show of its privacy commitment, Google also successfully rebuffed the U.S. Justice Department’s demand to examine millions of its users’ search requests in a court battle two years ago.

It’s not clear how Google intends to make money from its health service. The company sometimes introduces new products without ads just to give people more reason to visit its Web site, betting the increased traffic will boost its profits in the long run.

Google Inc is offering a US$30mil (RM105mil) contest that could significantly boost the commercial space industry and spur the first non-governmental flight to the moon. They call it Moon 2.0 and the bulk of the prize will go to the first private company that can land a robotic rover on the moon and beam back a gigabyte of images and video to Earth.

For this challenge Google partnered with the X Prize Foundation, which is open to companies all around the world. The Santa Monica-based nonprofit prize institute is best known for hosting the Ansari X Prize contest, which led to the first manned private spaceflight in 2004. The Google Lunar X Prize joins another prize already dangling in front of potential competitors: US$50mil (RM175mil) that hotel magnate Robert Bigelow is offering the first private American team to rocket a manned craft into orbit by 2010.

Any spacecraft participate must be tough enough to survive a landing and be equipped with high-definition video and still cameras and also it must be smart enough to trek at least 400m on the moon and send self-portraits, panoramic views and near-real-time videos back to Earth that will be streamed on Google’s website.

Participants must secure a launch vehicle for the probe, either by building it themselves or contracting with an existing private rocket company. Private rocket company Space X said it will subsidise use of its launch vehicle to interested competitors. The company, headed by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, has not had a fully successful launch in two tries.

“I hope that a very ambitious team of people will allow us all to virtually go back to the moon very soon. I couldn’t be more excited about that,” said teh Google co-founder Larry Page at WIRED magazine’s technology show in Los Angeles. If there is no winner, the purse will drop to US$15mil (RM52.5mil) until the end of 2014, when the contest expires. There is also a US$5mil (RM17.5mil) second-place prize and US$5mil in bonus money to teams that go beyond the minimum requirements.

Today, 31 August 2007 is the 50th independence day of Malaysia. It will be the historic day for Malaysia not just because we celebrate this day with awesome fireworks, holiday etc but also with this interesting logo from Google. Check it out!