Here’s why Google’s Fitbit purchase is worth every penny—even if we never get a Pixel Watch - nelsonfrored1945

The smartwatch wars hardly got a hatful more interesting. Google has announced that it testament be purchasing Fitbit for $2.1 billion and delivery one of the about pop fitness and smartwatch brands into the Google tent. As with any attainment, IT'll be a while in front the first fruits of the merger are realized, but there's certainly a lot to be excited about.

Basically, Fitbit is the perfect congratulate to WearOS. While Fitbit entered the smartwatch distance only two years ago with the uneven Ionic, its sequential releases, the Versa, Versa Nonfat, and Versa 2, have shown factual growth and maturity. They're not happening the spirit level of an Apple Look on or steady indefinite of the better WearOS watches when information technology comes to being intense, however, and that's where Google's charm could make a real difference.

Google

Put on OS has its problems, but coupled with Fitbit's fitness acumen, it could become a strong player.

Google obviously played that up in its declaration of the sale. Devices chief Rick Osterloh all but confirmed new "Ready-made by Google wearable devices" are already in the works, and announced that the cardinal companies would be "delivery together the outflank computer hardware, software and AI, to physical body wearables to help justified more people around the world." Fitbit echoed these sentiments and promised the merger would "speed up innovation in the wearables category, scale faster, and cause health level more accessible to everyone."

Just whether or not we get a Pixel Watch or prudish sleep trailing in Wear Oculus sinister International Relations and Security Network't the endgame for Google. To be honest, I don't think the purchase has anything to ut with hardware at all. As with everything Google, it has to do with information, and in the case of Fitbit there's a heck of very much of it. The two one million million dollars Google spent doesn't even begin to put a price thereon.

Profits and privacy

I've been to several Fitbit establish events, and every united has started with a similar set of facts and figures outlining the lots of data it collects to help meliorate its metrics and personalize its insights. Similar Apple, Fitbit vows to never sell your data to third-company advertisers and offered simple toggles to keep it locked out of view. It's a gumption of certificate and concealment that umteen Fitbit owners cherish.

Michael Simon/IDG

Fitbit users value their privacy, and I Don River't think Google will jeopardize that commi.

To its credit, Google understands that information privacy is of paramount importance to Fitbit's users. In and of itself, the merger annunciation specified that "Fitbit health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads. … And we will give Fitbit users the choice to review, move, or delete their information." I Don't doubt that arrogate. Google has steadily been responding to criticism and pressure over its laissez-faire attitude toward privacy, and it's implemented real, meaningful changes to the way we use our Google accounts. Past the same tokenish, I also think the trove of data it's inheriting will be unbelievably semiprecious, evening if it's ne'er technically sold to advertisers.

Precedent, just weeks before the acquisition was declared, Fitbit and the BMS-Pfizer Alignment bag-shaped a partnership "to work together on a multi-year partnership to accelerate detection and diagnosis of atrial fibrillation (afib) to cut back the risk of dangerous events." According to the release, the companies "bequeath use their combined resources and expertise to help identify and support people at increased chance for afib … (and) plan to develop digital tools and educational easygoing that volition provide back from covering to diagnosis, and will provide users with information to scout a cultivable discussion with their MD."

In Fitbit's hands, that partnership merely adds esteem to its devices, an extension of its deputation to "empower and inspire you to live a healthier, more agile life." But with Google at the helm, it's an invaluable stepping stone on the path to vie in an arena IT's been mostly compressed out of: health care.

Information is as data does

Information technology power seem outlandish to suggest that Google could suit a caregiver, but tech giants are already playing the game. The multi-trillion dollar industry is on the verge of major change, and technical school giants are already laying tracks for the day the model changes.

Jon Phillips/IDG

From kids to adults, Fitbit's trove of health and fitness data is far more valuable that the toll Google paid for it.

Amazon already owns a prescription troupe called PillPack. Just dying week it announced Haven Healthcare, a joint venture with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, to offer wellness insurance plans for employees that "feature wellness incentives and don't have any deductibles." It as wel runs a virtual clinic for Seattle employees called Amazon Maintenance. Similarly, Apple operates AC Wellness, "an independent medical practice dedicated to delivering compassionate, operative healthcare to the Apple employee population."

And if there's peerless matter these ventures whol have in common, it's data. Whether it's bought (in the caseful of Amazon) or harvested (via Apple Watch), the health care industry is built connected information, and Google just picked up a ton of it. Even if Google vowed never to sell the data or use it in Google ads, the company makes no such promises about using that data for non-Fitbit-related ventures. With such a generous supply of information and tens of millions of lively users, the scope of what's possible is mind-boggling: health studies, prescription do drugs trials, behavioral research, price comparisons, the list goes on. Couple that with the mountains of location data it already has, and Google might have just get ahead the about powerful non-provider in the healthcare quad.

And it can't do it without Fitbit. Without a wearable off its own OR eventide a wide put-upon first-party good shape app, Google's health and fitness data is sporadic at best, and certainly not arsenic dependable and robust as Fitbit's. Obviously every habiliment player wants a piece of Apple and neither Fitbit nor Google was able to compete on its own, but a lot equivalent Google Fi and the Pixel, I think its ambitions are untold larger than its own its own hardware. Yes we might see a Pixel Watch, and yes, Fitbit devices might run a interpretation of Wear thin OS and get Google Subordinate suffer, but that's only a side of meat upshot to the real draw: information. Google doesn't have to sell whatsoever of IT to get rich.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/398317/google-fitbit-purchase-data-health-care-fitness.html

Posted by: nelsonfrored1945.blogspot.com

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