Fitbit was established in 2007 by two entrepreneurs James Park and Eric Friedman, who envisioned manufacturing wearable gadgets with health sensors. The company’s first product, known as the Fitbit, launched in 2009. Wearers could attach it to their clothing and it would track their movement, sleep, as well as the calories they expended.
In under a decade, Fitbit grew from the two entrepreneurs struggling to find investors to a multibillion-dollar enterprise. Then came Google in November of 2019, which paid $2.1 billion to acquire the well-known fitness tracking company.
Google’s acquisition of Fitbit has been the subject of investigation, including questions over whether the agreement could help the search giant take a larger share of the advertising industry if it uses Fitbit data to customise its adverts. Both Fitbit and Google have made it clear that user data will not be used to target adverts. Rather than focusing on the advertising element, Google’s rationale for the Fitbit transaction appears to be far more intriguing.
Google isn’t making its first foray into the smartwatch market. The Tech giant acquired Fossil’s smartwatch technology in January 2019 and even employed some of the engineers that worked on the product. The acquisition of Fitbit by Google raises legitimate worries about the company’s acquisition strategy.
Google’s decision to buy Fitbit made sense for a number of reasons. Fitbit will help Google stand out in the health and wellness wearables market. For Fitbit, Google’s support means that its wearable fitness devices will be better than before. Google’s Wear OS is a more advanced smartwatch platform than Fitbit’s, and Google thinks that combining the two will lead to success.
The impact of Google’s acquisition of Fitbit will be more obvious than ever by 2022
As of February 2021, Fitbits were being sold with Google’s other gadgets. If you go to the Google Store website and click on the “Watches” section, you can buy any of Fitbit’s current wearables, from the basic Fitbit Inspire 2 tracker to the Fitbit Sense smartwatch, which is their most popular model. The Fitbit name is still on everything, but it’s evident that these gadgets are now owned by Google.
Google, on the other hand, plans to incorporate Fitbit data into its future Pixel Watch. When Google announced the Pixel Watch at Google I/O in May 2022, it received significant attention. Google also announced that the Pixel Watch will be fully integrated with the Fitbit ecosystem. This means that the Pixel Watch will have a Fitbit app and be able to sync data with the Fitbit app on a smartphone. Leaks suggest the Pixel Watch has the same health sensors as the Fitbit Luxe and Charge 5. Thus, we can anticipate all-day activity tracking, heart-rate monitoring 24 hours a day, cardiac fitness levels, etc.
And that’s it with the Google and Fitbit deal. The influence will grow with time.
Fitbit, on the other hand, has announced that it is developing a Fitbit-branded wristwatch running Wear OS 3. A Fitbit wearable powered by Wear OS is expected to appear at some point, but the exact date has not been announced.
A fascinating question is: how Fitbit fits into the rest of Google’s ecosystem?
Fitbit and Google Fit will coexist as two distinct systems for the foreseeable future. But it’s not hard to imagine Google shutting down Google Fit and only using Fitbit in the future. Google has its wearable tech, Fitbit has its health expertise,, and those two things are likely to merge for some time to come.
