Google Acquires Fitness-Focused Wearable Company Fitbit for $2.1 Billion

Google has just announced it has officially acquired wearable company Fitbit for a whopping $2.1 billion.

Google SVP of Devices and Services in a blog post said that the Fitbit purchase is “an opportunity to invest even more in Wear OS as well as introduce Made by Google wearable devices into the market.”

The development comes days after Innovation Village reported that Google was in negotiation to buy the popular fitness tracker company.

The acquisition is a big score for Google as it has for years been striving to break into the wearables market with its Wear OS platform, but it struggled to make a real impact.

Fitbit’s hardware chops have always been great, giving Google a much stronger foundation to build on for future Android-integrated wearables devices. And the company’s strong focus on fitness tracking could naturally be integrated into Google’s existing Google Fit apps, too, offering Google a solid alternative to the Apple Watch’s deep fitness tracking integration with the iPhone.

On Google’s end , it’s software skills and wide developer support could help Fitbit’s smartwatches like the Versa get a little smarter, alongside the deeper software integration with Android that a closer relationship could offer.

Fitbit isn’t Google’s first investment in fitness-focused wearables. The company had spent  $40 million to buy some unknown smartwatch technology from Fossil based on tech that Fossil itself acquired when it bought wearable maker Misfit back in 2015.