23andMe is a biotechnology company. Its name comes from the 23 pairs of chromosomes in human cells. Although there are many companies offering personalized DNA sequencing, the related services are generally expensive, around or even over 1,000 dollars. 23andMe made a breakthrough when, a few years ago, it began selling a kit that allowed the buyer to collect a small amount of saliva, mail it to the company’s offices, and receive, within a few days (electronically), information about their DNA, naturally accompanied by statistical probabilities of future diseases. At first, the kit cost only 250 dollars.
Although 23andMe, five years after the kit’s release, found itself at odds with the American FDA (which began to claim that the kit is a “medical device” and requires special authorization to be sold), it succeeded absolutely. In what? Not in the “personal genetic information” it sells, but in something else: in creating a huge genetic database, drawn from the hundreds of thousands of its customers.
23andMe managed to become a genetic Google “on the sly,” and besides, its management had some connection to Google from the start. Now it enjoys insanely lucrative (from a financial perspective) contracts with pure-blood biotech companies, providing processed or unprocessed data from its customer base. This allows it to sell the kit even cheaper. Under 100 euros.
(Silly customers for free – not to mention something worse. But they’re not the only ones…)