For more than a decade, Fitbit has helped people around the world live healthier, more active lives. A clear pioneer in the industry, Fitbit built a vibrant community of more than 29 million active users by creating amazing wearable devices and immersive wellness experiences. Today, I’m excited to announce that Google has completed its acquisition of Fitbit and I want to personally welcome this talented team to Google.
Fitbit’s latest and most advanced health and fitness smartwatch, Fitbit Sense, features stress management tools and new ways to manage your heart health, including an ECG app to assess heart rhythm for signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib). And with its latest tracker, Inspire 2, Fitbit brought an enhanced design and features, including Active Zone Minutes, to its most accessible device. Fitbit added a new Health Metrics dashboard in the Fitbit app which lets you track and see changes in heart rate variability, breathing rate and oxygen saturation. These newest devices and services help you better manage your health and wellness, and when combined with Fitbit Premium’s personalized insights, content and actionable guidance, you have everything you need to reach your goals.
Technology can change the way people manage their health and wellness, and that’s especially important these days. We’ll work closely to create new devices and services that help you enhance your knowledge, success, health and happiness. Your privacy and security are paramount to achieving this and we are committed to protecting your health information and putting you in control of your data.
This deal has always been about devices, not data, and we’ve been clear since the beginning that we will protect Fitbit users’ privacy. We worked with global regulators on an approach which safeguards consumers’ privacy expectations, including a series of binding commitments that confirm Fitbit users’ health and wellness data won’t be used for Google ads and this data will be separated from other Google ads data. We’ll also maintain access to Android APIs that enable devices like fitness trackers and smart watches to interoperate with Android smartphones, and we’ll continue to allow Fitbit users to choose to connect to third-party services so you’ll still be able to sync your favorite health and fitness apps to your Fitbit account. These commitments will be implemented globally so that all consumers can benefit from them. We’ll also continue to work with regulators around the world so that they can be assured that we are living up to these commitments.
Together, we can make health and wellness more accessible to more people. We’re confident the combination of Fitbit’s leading technology, product expertise and health and wellness innovation with the best of Google’s AI, software and hardware will drive more competition in wearables and make the next generation of devices better and more affordable. For more on what this partnership means for Fitbit and its community of millions of users, please read Fitbit CEO James Park’s letter to customers.
Source : Google completes Fitbit acquisition
