[krab]

But why Google? This is what big pharma are doing. Also you can outsource the data collection part. See for example UK Biobank. Their data are available to multiple companies after some period so it makes it more cost efficient.

[dekhn]

Why Google? Because this is a big data problem and Google mastered big data and ML on big data a long time ago. Most big pharma hasn't completely internalized the mindset required to do truly large-scale data analysis.