Here’s a fitbit deal that makes perfect sense for Google.
The $2.1bn price tag is a pretty hefty premium given Fitbit market value was around the $1.4bn-mark last week, but it’s small change when considered against the bigger picture of gaining a huge amount of health data.
For Fitbit, it’s a noble exit after putting up a decent fight in the years since the launch of Apple’s smartwatch.
A Fitbit-Google product could mean Wear OS – Google’s wearable operating system – will get a much-needed boost.
I do wonder, though, how Fitbit’s 28 million users will feel about this.
Anecdotally, I know several people who have told me that Fitbit’s relative autonomy from the tech giants was an incentive to buy their products (though Fitbit has used Google’s cloud to support its service since 2018).
By next year, the health data Fitbit has on its users today will become Google’s data, a valuable acquisition for Google, undoubtedly, but one that I predict could make consumers uncomfortable.