Fitbit is now officially part of Google(blog.fitbit.com) |
Fitbit is now officially part of Google(blog.fitbit.com) |
Please make it stop....
I picked one up last year and have been super pleased with it.
I have gadgetbridge with a Lenovo WatchX. Cheap, cheerful, works ok without competing with apple watch for quality. Great battery life.
What else is there?
You may point to other competitive devices that do things better, but I think that just shows how hard it is to compete in the smartphone business.
Unfortunately they don't move any significant units because Google doesn't know how to market them, sell them or distribute them ... because Google is bad at devices.
Can't make good watch hardware OR software? Just buy part of Fossil and Fitbit to handle that.
Can't make good smart home devices to compete with Amazon's Ring or Simplisafe? Just buy Nest, Revolv, and a huge stake of ADT.
etc. etc.
Also, the juxtaposition was meant to highlight the various competitors in the space, not necessarily to say that those don't also acquire companies to gain share.
And both of them have had major usability, integrations and stability issues over the years that are hard to ignore.
In an ideal world, I wish that small companies like Fitbit could compete with Google and Apple and release good all-inclusive smartwatches that developers can use to bukld good general-purpose apps, with a well-designed interface, and that are also very solid fitness trackers.
Unfortunately we aren't in an ideal world though, so I can just hope that this acquisition helps bringing some proper vision in the current chaos that reigns in the WearOS and Fit departments.
What WearOS needs is man power and an easier time getting the fix they need in the Android tree. It's not however a lost cause. With the improved activity monitoring provided by Fitbit it could be nice.
Aplhabet has non trivial stake in Oscar health, and this fitbit acquisition plays right into being price health insurance policies for users.
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2021/01/google-completes-acquisi...
As a mobile developer, when we do any Health integration, the topmost platforms by usage are Apple Health and Fitbit, followed by Samsung Health and lastly Google Fit.
This easily lets them catapult in second place.
I pray that this time, it's different, but I'm not holding my breath.
I consider it a massive failure of our governments that whilst acknowledging Google is a monopoly and engaging in antitrust cases against them, they also permitted Google to buy a multibillion dollar company that will expand their monopoly.
Consider that Oracle claims that the regulatory actions around the world against Google are because they ran an extensive but secret lobbying campaign against Google to make this happen. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-23/oracle-fo... With enough lobbying dollars much is possible - isn't this a reminder to wait for the outcome before you convict?
Also, clearly the monopoly that is being suggested is not in this area - in fact, there is a danger in the dominance of Apple's watch and this should increase competition.
I saw Apple Watch utterly destroy Microsoft Band and Pebble, and FitBit was headed for the same fate. If not for Google stepping in, competition against Apple Watch would have just been from Garmin (solid company, but they too probably would have been crushed).
Source: investor in Apple, FitBit, Garmin, Google, Microsoft; was in the first batch of Pebble 3rd party devs; avid Microsoft Band user and participated in a number of internal projects when I was there.
People often land in prison before they are convicted. Also restricting a company that appears to be a bad actor to prevent additional harm on society seems only sensible.
Yeah, and this is seen as a huge injustice by many people. There are clear cut cases where there is a risk of flight or further harm, but in most cases, this type of discretionary pre-trial incarceration tends to impact minorities and people without means to hire lawyers or pay for bonds.
This analogy falls apart there because there are few companies that would be subject to monopoly rules that would lack the resources to defend themselves.
This is the problem. A smartwatch should not be burning a lot of RAM. It has a battery the size of a dime, it should be doing very little with processor or memory. Wear OS is too bloated to the task.
Then again, the Gen 5 has 1Go and works fine. That's the same amount than an Apple watch serie 4/5.
> It has a battery the size of a dime, it should be doing very little with processor or memory.
Wear OS is far from perfect but that's more on the Snapdragon 3100. Samsung and Apple CPU are far better but they don't sell them.
It's very much a chicken and egg situation. Qualcomm doesn't invest because there is not market and there is no market because poor CPUs lead to products which are not competitive. Google could have unlocked the situation but I guess they were wainting for the Fitbit acquisition to go through before going back to wearables.
"Hi, Qualcomm, this is Rick Osterloh from Google. How much money would we need to invest for you to release a smartwatch processor that isn't garbage?" "Hey Rick. We'd need about $$$$." "Great, I work for a trillion-dollar company."
Which is to say, Google has the money and power to literally make what it wants happen, if it isn't happening, it's not reasonable or logical to blame another party. It is fundamentally a lack of commitment by Google to support their product line.
Surprisingly it doesn't stop with hardware: Compete with iPhone with your own mobile OS? Nah - just acquire Android.
Lastly, a multi-trillion dollar company doesn't need your aggressive defense across every comment in this thread. Hope they see this, bro
Yes "bro" they saw this. Tool.
Well, actually, on this segment, they kind of are.
> It is fundamentally a lack of commitment by Google to support their product line.
Yes, I think I did say that repeatedly in the post you are answering. I also talked about the Nexus line. The again, Google did buy a giant of the wearable and fitness industry. It's just that the acquisition took a lot longer than expected.
Still, I was initially answering someone calling Wear OS garbage. It is in need of more developers and working on suboptimal hardware however.
This should lead to more competition by making it possible for Fitbit to compete with Apple. If it doesn't then the acquisition was a failure for Google anyway - Fitbit's current market share is not acceptable for a company like Google.
If this is a reason for acquisition, then why wouldn't G*gle wait until they were "killed" so they could come in and buy their business for pennies on the dollar?
We're fast approaching a dystopian Snow Crash world of all-powerful corporations, and you people are cheering it along.
How can these both be true?
- it's bad all US legacy media is owned by 5 corporations. - it's good for FB, Apple, Amazon and to buy up all adjacent business.
I don't see how sharing data is a good argument for unchecked consolidation of power. I'm pretty sure Fitbit could export an open standard data format, and Google could consume one. But I guess rich people wouldn't be able to get even richer if they did that.
Because what Google wants to buy is their marketshare and existing userbase. I very much doubt fitbit has any tech or products google couldn't make themselves in a few months. The longer fitbit sucks compared to their competition the lower that becomes.
I'm also not for this. I wasn't for nest either. I now trust the device on my wrist less.
The company waiting for this to happen missed out on the deal.
Nobody wins here, except for a very small group of already outrageously powerful and rich people. Any regular human being will at best gain nothing from this and at worst have all of their information inserted into the Google silo.
Walmart is uniquely set up to become the first FOQNE.
It's bad when Nazis and Nazi-adjacent folks don't get a platform because they're my... uh...
I really don't care that it has tons of data on me, Google has been super responsible of my data and its uses. The risk/reward is 100% worth.
If you told me this was a failed attempt at obvious sarcasm now, I'd totally still believe you.
It's good to be able to integrate that information. It's bad to be forced to let Google integrate that information. I dislike it because Google isn't known for letting users choose.
They also know what you searched, watched or visited before and after having sex.
There's a lot of info they can pull out of that little device.
The database they bought is worth every penny.
"google/apple data control monopolies are killing products i like. But that is fine because that makes those products cheap for google/apple and i love them."
However, I sincerely doubt Fitbit would have been worth anywhere near as much under those conditions.
If Google wants to compete in this space they should have been forced to build it themselves. IMO letting Fitbit die would have been better for users privacy-wise.
> so I don't see what Google could add other than lots of money and SWE hours
That matters.
> IMO letting Fitbit die would have been better for users privacy-wise.
Have you seen what some companies do when they are on the brink of insolvency? They start firing engineers, best practices lapse, and they start monetizing everything.
And have you seen the EU data privacy conditions?
And finally, of the companies that could have bought them, which has a better record of keeping their users' data private then Google?
But also, as a Fitbit user, if I wanted all my data deleted I could do that, but I absolutely do not. I want it kept private, supported, and crunched by a company like Google to our mutual advantage.
I got a new fitbit for Christmas because I couldn't even initialize it without installing their app on my smartphone. I don't want their app on my phone. I don't want it to report all my info to their servers. I don't want it to have access to my gps location, which is might be reporting in. My old fitbit doesn't need any of that at all, and I don't see the need for a new one (that would meet my needs) to, either.
In order for there to be a market, both sides have to exist: sellers and buyers. I'm not convinced Android users have the appetite for multi-hundred-dollar accessories the same way Apple users do, and given Apple's engineering skill and vertical integration, nobody is going to sell a smartwatch that's as good for less.
Other than that, it's a pretty nice device. Unfortunately it requires a subscription to get the most out of it.
I replaced my versa with Apple Watch when the versa died. I don’t necessarily regret it, but it didn’t feel like an upgrade and came with significant downsides.
In particular, Fitbit gives far more control over notifications, especially for built-in apps like messages. Fitbit makes media controls easily accessible - on Apple Watch, they’re always moving and hard to get back to especially during a workout. My main use case is skipping podcast commercials, so not being able to do that quickly is a problem.
Battery life was much better on the versa. It also charged faster, so it would almost always be done charging after a shower, Apple Watch only sometimes is.
Tldr there is definitely room to deliver a better product than Apple’s. Whether or not Google is capable of doing that is a different question that I won’t address.
I wanted to like them, but the quality of the product was lacking, and I'm happier with the Apple Watch.
Fitbit is/was a mosquito, they could never surive an 'all out war' with Apple. Fitbit does not compete with Apple. Google does.
The problem is that once Google gets their hands on our sweet data (in the off chance you don't have an android phone), then they will definitely put that data in 'good use'.
I see some (marketable) benefits though... Fitbits can be tracked. Imagine walking past a store, a sensor with 'talk' with your fitbit, and pull your G-ad profile and a screen will display the ad you missed to see on your gmail. And this is what I need to see. Walking past a sex shop and being flashed this huge wierd looking dildo with lights and lasers, because Google 'knows' I enjoy sex and Star Wars (not combined though).
And all that thanks to my FitBit bracelet :) (my android phone is security-hardened enough to not run in the background and/or transmit 'stuff')
It may provide simple price competition, but I don't think price competition is a main reason for the anti-monopoly sentiment you are referring to. This is more about centralisation/decentralisation, data aggregation.
Fitness trackers are too basic. I can't wait to see if the Oneplus smart watch is any good. https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/22/22196180/oneplus-smartwa...
Why can't I have an entirely offline driven system? Data stays local, no ability to upload it online at all, and all processing is done without ever needing the internet.
That's a key criteria if I ever was thinking of getting a smart wearable, I'm not going to generate even more data that can be profited from and potentially used against me.
It's increasingly looking like storing data is a huge responsibility (although, if it is ever leaked, sadly humans don't tend to see prison time for this crime).
What we need is a clause that says "if this data ever touches the internet whether accidental or otherwise the CEO goes straight to jail, are you sure about this?".
Sadly, I think society as a whole is just "used" to this by now and a second thought is rarely given, disappointing this merger was approved, especially when the EU is investigating several "anti trusts", why give them even more power?
Oh well, I'll see you fellow HN readers on the next "major data leakage from misconfigured MongoDB and nobody is punished" thread.
I'm guessing they automatically hire some, and interview others who are maybe less core to the business. They can always layoff later if it doesn't end up being a fit.
Such a fucked up thing that that's legal in some parts of the world. "Ah I don't know if we should hire these people or not, let's just hire them now and if we don't need them, fire them later. We can tell them a week before or something" just fills the air with smug MBAs not understanding that some people work for a living, not for fun.
Genuine Q: even if the employees don't take kindly to it, does it matter?
No thanks and no deal.
Dear Customer,
We are sorry for improperly sending out the "Broken
Heart" alert to you on January 21, 2023. We should
have sent you the "She's Pregnant" alert. In the
future, please ensure both you and your dating partners
are running the same OS version. Thank you for your
understanding.
sorry,
FizzyBaneFitness
Now I think about the fact that I just looked someone up on contacts.google.com, then added a visit with them to calendar.google.com, and talked with them about it via gmail.com. They know so much about me already, and now they'll have my health history.
The only silver lining is that their security is probably better, and my data is less likely to be hacked and stolen.
But otherwise... Looking forward to a nice Linux/open software fitness watch, from a Kickstarter or other effort, so some of us can take better control of our data.
My Versa 2 has been operating like a champ since the day I got it when it came out. I push it too the limit in the outdoors with activities like surfing, snorkeling, et cetera.
Every year I buy the Apple Watch thinking this will be the year I switch. But again, just returned it on Friday. Hardware is super impressive, but it just feels like putting an iPad on my wrist. I don't want a computer on my wrist I just want to be healthy. And the battery life on the Versa 2 is just so much better. I put it on and only have to take it off about once a week for an hour to charge.
This all happened during the first lockdown, so I had to wait weeks for the stores to open and get it replaced.
But the replacement is going strong, I've had it for 9 months now.
When it breaks, they generally offer a free replacement or the option to buy a newer version at half price, so since my first in 2016, I've had six or seven — three or four replacements and two half-price upgrades. (Charge HR replaced once or twice, Blaze replaced once, and Charge 3 replaced once.)
I suspect I'm still a profitable customer, but I suspect they'll become a lot stingier eventually.
My main concern with switching to a different brand is that I'm worried that they're be more breakable and less readily replaced. (Also, I'm on Android, so there are too many options and I can't decide.)
It's kinda cool but it's no Pebble, or any kind of daily driver watch.
Your photo manager
Your search engine
Your document storage service
Your health monitor
Your contacts list
Your video hosting facility
Your calendar
Your document editor
Your location history
Your music engine
And I have no doubt I'm missing a load here, point being why the fuck has the EU not stepped in at this point and said "woah buddy, you're a tad too big to be this unregulated".
The EU needs to enforce stricter regulation across all Google products, such as making it illegal to "ban" or lock out an account by means of an AI facility without human resolution within 6 hours or less (6 hours is a maximum, anything above incurs an hourly fine).
These must be regulated like a public service, because the risk of losing access to an online account can be devastating.
The onus, however, is on YOU to diversify, have redundant email addresses (forward+store a copy) so in the event one is RIP you are not boned entirely.
Your password manager
Your 2FA authenticator
Your notes manager
Your domain name provider
Your cloud provider
Your browser
Your operating system
Your smart home
Your phone number
Your mobile ISP
Your analytics provider
Battery life is your biggest loss if you leave Fitbit, almost nobody was making smartwatches as battery efficient.
Personally, Ive been using Garmin smartwatches for a few years now and they last about a week, with O2 sat scanner enabled over the night. Definitely been happy with them.
The mi band might suit your needs better.
Will probably upgrade to the Versa 3 or Sense, but the 2 is just awesome. I've also had the Charge 2, Charge, Ionic, Microsoft Band 2, and Microsoft Band 1. Versa 2 was a major leap.
Finally, I still consider these things early adopter territory, but in 10 years I think everyone and their dog will be wearing one.
I hope Google fixes this
My steps stick at 0, then suddenly are the total of the last 3 days' worth. I log food, and it re-populates the "quantity" field with the old value after I edit it, sometimes up to 8-10 times in a row. My sleep data takes a roulette-spin amount of time to go get processed in the cloud and redownloaded, and even once the main dashboard has the info, the "Sleep" detail page will refuse to admit that I slept last night for another 3d20 minutes.
It's like someone connecting the pieces of a car with Slinkys instead of bolts because they're more flexible. If I didn't like the hardware so much I'd have switched ages ago.
I purchased a Mi Band 5 for $35 which is a vastly better device than fitbit equivalents for a quarter of the price. You can use it without data being sent to the cloud if you use the open source package GadgetBridge.
The bot based support question answers is a complete joke. Maybe not Google's fault but the connectivity between the watches and the phone is the most flakey thing ever. Considering a $20 Xiaomi Band can keep a bluetooth connection forever I don't think it is the hardware. The rest of the software stack is hobbled my a java stack that needs gigs to run.
I'm as irritated as you at data leaks from negligence, but jail? I thought jail was not supposed to be for "punishment" but rather to protect the public from someone too dangerous to allow free, and even then it should mainly target "rehabilitation."
You're now talking about using it clearly just for punishment (which I would argue we do all over the place, totally inconsistent with it's stated purpose). This is before we discuss whether jail is torture. Even if the "jail" is well regulated to prevent thing like violence and sexual abuse, it's terrible to lock a person in a cage. There are plenty of studies about the effects that has on a person's mind. Then you consider that you're soft blackballed from employment (and therefore society) when you get a "record" and can't pass a background check, and that the positive feedback loop leads to a life of poverty, crime, and suffering that is avoidable.
Please consider the significance of what you are arguing for here.
Please don't assume that anyone with a different view hasn't considered the significance of their position.
Handling data is a privilege, not a right, and can come at a huge cost. Just look at Parler for example, they weren't even stripping EXIF data which depending on how you look at is is either great for those involved to be tracked and arrested or a terrifying oversight that will lead to huge repercussions...
Data can end lives, this has been proven time and again, it's just as dangerous as a knife or gun in certain circumstances and the crime of having it leaked must have an appropriate punishment
Companies with armies of lawyers are pretty good at establishing plausible deniability, so the "because your employees made a mistake" argument, while you advanced it in good faith, is constantly exploited as an excuse.
It seems broken that I also have to have a phone, app store access to get a device to drive the pixels for data it already has.
Every piece of hardware that does this is effectively "app store locked", your phone is now your software dongle for your hardware.
Some functions, like sleep tracking, are too computationally intensive to do on a wrist computer.
The answer as to why other companies store data online should be obvious: There's a business can for having access to that data.
Because that's less profitable for the corporate data barons.
or when
It may not be much, but I feel a lot more at ease using their products than what Fitbit is going to be handing over to Google.
You have to ask yourself, why don't we want companies to sell our data in the first place? What's wrong with a third party having it? Its out of fear of them abusing that data. So then you have to ask yourself, what counts as abuse? To me, its any time a company uses the data against me, in order to make me spend money or buy products. This is EXACTLY what Google does with my data. They use it to find out what the best adverts to serve me are, that give the highest likelihood that I will click on them and buy something. Given the amount of garbage adverts they have, I do not trust Google for a second: I've seen plenty of Google and Youtube adverts for outright scams, exploitative garbage like Raid Shadow Legends, have heard reports of malware being served, etc. As long as Google happily serve these adverts on their network (and they don't even respond to reporting the adverts, as plenty of HN submissions have shown), I don't believe they can be trusted, in general and certainly not with my data.
Therefore, I do not want Google to have any data on me and that's why I am against this and other acquisitions.
Besides just the data, its also Googles record for shutting down services they buy and their non-existent customer support.
Genuine question - have you had many experiences where you bought something due to a highly targeted ad and shortly after regretted the purchase?
Recent examples: Google tracking users per Chrome installation ID [1], Chrome exempting Google sites from user site data setting [2], Chrome experimenting with silently proxying user traffic through their servers [3].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24817304 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25337995
Also, Google has the capability to do much more damage with my personal information than most other organizations on earth.
Ultimately, I don't trust them, and I can't opt out of their data collection. (Yes, I've seen their opt-out page. It doesn't stop them from building ad profiles when I browse third party sites, mapping my back yard, discriminating against me with ReCaptcha, mapping my wifi ssid location without my consent, or doing countless other things I'd rather they not do, and that I never gave them permission to do.)
Also enjoy the paperweight when they kill your Google account for whatever random reason (we won't even tell you why and no appeals, have fun!)
But Google acquiring them makes me feel like they'll last a long time, and I won't have to switch ecosystems yet again (I was coming from Microsoft Band).
I would have loved it if FitBit could have remained independent, but basically impossible in today's messed up competitive environment.
But I do understand that shady stuff at big companies have bigger blast radius, as they have more users, and often more diverse data, but I trust them way more than random startup.
1) the fear of Google owning data is that they will be able to target us more and more. As if our internet behavior data wasn't enough, now they have our biological data.
2) the fact that they don't sell it misses the point because in fact they are the party we don't want the data to get to (along with Facebook et all). And you can bet your ass they'll sell it when they strapped for cash.
3) I would definitely not rather my data he with a tech giant who can map it with all my other data that they currently have.
Haven't bought one yet, but the PineTime watch from Pine64 seems nice. There's apparently already a FOSS os/firmware or two as well.
I work for Fitbit. I don't speak for Fitbit, but now that the deal is closed I can share my own opinions and ask my own questions.
What makes you think Google wants Apple to have the only good smart watch? That would be the main effect of sunsetting Fitbit.
Nest still exists after their 2014 acquisition by Google, and Nest is not as important to any other part of Google as Fitbit is to Android. Why would they be more inclined to sunset Fitbit?
That aside, if they end up tying Fitbit accounts to Google accounts, the whole jig is up anyway, because no-one wants to buy a hardware product whose operation depends upon not having Google shut your account down with no recourse other than to raise a stink on sites like HN.
Chances are that Fitbit won't be around 2-3 years from now, hence no real reason to invest in a product from them now.
Wear OS shows how little Google care about good smart watches. It's six years old and still bad, if they wanted it to be good they would've fixed it years ago.
That's very debatable, considering the smartwatches from Samsung, Fossil, Garmin...
And as a bit of a metric nerd the Garmin data exports rock.
Oh, and I haven't charged it in over a week.
My combo is Apple Watch by day, Oura Ring by night. I don’t often wear them together.
Very happy with the setup and would recommend.
Disclosure: I also own Garmin Stock, but am a FitBit user (owned FitBit stock too but sold when the GOOG acquisition was announced).
Only issue I noticed was the heart rate monitor was wildly inaccurate but this was on a much older version (the 2 I think, maybe the mi band 5 has fixed this)
We've considered other ways of doing this that will preserve our requirements to keep customer data private and unable to be tampered with. We will likely make it more flexible in the future, but this is the scheme that has worked since the company was founded, almost 14 years ago.
I couldn't do it on the watch itself. I couldn't do it on my phone from the app. The only solution was to log in to fitbit.com in a browser, change a setting there, then re-sync my device via the app.
I think regulation is the only way to change this because it's a gravy train.
This sort of thing is as dead as a doornail, unfortunately.
I understand there's a feature set trade off, I don't necessarily want a wearable that connects to the internet itself.
Gadgetbridge is mentioned regularly in these threads, thank you! Privacy is one of our main goals. We support quite a few bands and watches and the list of devices and features is growing. We are also happy for contributing members, so if you think that your movement data and notifications should remain private and can do some Android development, stop by, we are at Codeberg. https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge
Those products are awesome if you want a lower-end fitness tracker. Originally I bought a Mi Band 4 because I saw it reported itself as a bluetooth HR accessory, meaning you could get continuous heart rate on bluetooth if you paired your device -- whereas FitBit's protocol was encrypted and proprietary. Did some cool stuff with that (a shirt with an LED matrix screen that pulsed at the wearers heart rate!)
Wouldn't say the hardware is "vastly better", I found the continuous heart rate monitoring to be a bit sluggish -- i.e. it averaged out HR over a longer period than the fitbits I've had did, so you were less likely to detect the peaks and recovery periods during excercise. Otherwise it was much of a muchness, but cheaper. I imagine the cheaper HW probably meant corners were cut with the sensors and firmware, but being hardly the athlete I didn't care outside of heart rate sensing.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mc.miband1...
I’ll probably get an Apple Watch but I’d prefer something eink and “dumber” with just clock, heartrate, steps, stairs and GPS, no accounts and no forced uploading to their servers would be ideal.
I love the FitBit device though. If there’s some opensource way to keep using it without Google being involved I’ll probably try that.
*edit, found this eval kit by maxim
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/maxim-integrated/...
Kinda expensive and not very open for an eval kit. The only somewhat difficult part is implementing the pulse oximetry signal chain and analysis software. Everything else is basic integration.
Google is not a company that respects their users. It's that simple. Apple doesn't respect developers, but it does respect users. Google respects neither. I'd say the current situation in tech is not especially positive for users generally, but having a product tied to Google, Facebook, or Amazon would be your worst case scenario, and I'm actively trying to excise these products from my life.
You are claiming that their thoughts are only the result of abusive conditioning.
IMO, that's an extremely arrogant position - "oh, if you disagree with me, it must be because you are not smart enough to actually think for yourself"
Do they sell their company out and get rich, or do they stick to their principles and safeguard their users data?
I don't have the right answer. What I do know is when you're facing down a multi-million dollar payout, principles tend to get tossed out the window.
Furthermore, I pay for FitBit Premium and would strongly encourage Google to always keep FitBit a paid product/service and never monetize it via ads.
I don't have any expertise in this area, but my hunch from what I saw with Apple vs WhatsApp, is that in the long run sticking with paid products and not switching to Ads is better for success. Also, likely a lot harder to build up a base of paying users and if you throw that away would be a colossal mistake.
Anyway, I'm not a business expert but am a passionate FitBit user and very happy about this acquisition because just like you I was worried for their survival.
Sometimes I can’t watch a YouTube link if I’m away from home and the VPN isn’t working on 4G, but that’s as bad as it ever gets these days.
As one data point I just spent $1300 on a new top end Garmin watch and use it with Android.
Though, I’m one person, so that doesn’t invalidate your point.
Acquiring the talent is a big part of these acquisitions, and it makes sense for Google to try to keep them happy.
The Mi Band 4 has a 96MHz MCU and not a lot more storage.
> I’m not sure the pine time will be powerful enough to actually use.
I suspect you're grossly overestimating the compute power needed for a lot of the features smartwatches currently have because you're not very familiar with ecosystem.
There is also the Venu and Vivoactive lines with touch screens, but their battery isn't nearly as good as anything in forerunner's camp.
I mostly use the web ui but loading the data into one of the open source offline tools is on my to-do list. There's actually some analytics/reports I want to generate that Garmin doesn't provide, so I might end up doing it purely to write some reports.
(Although the peace of mind I would get knowing that I could pull the plug on my Garmin account whenever I want would be nice.)
Though it isn't perfect. When Garmin had the outage last year I unpaired my phone which actually reset some of the configuration I had done on the watch, which was really annoying.
But regardless whether there is a deterrent benefit, I think the reality is that jails effect non-executives and normal people (especially the closer to poverty you get) far more than they ever would executives. A much better approach IMHO would be to develop alternatives and phase out incarceration altogether (or at least as much as possible) by rolling them out broadly, would be a better, more humane solution.
Another reason is that the alternative of syncing your device with a computer doesn't work with most of the population. They either aren't familiar with tech enough or they don't own a computer. The rest get annoyed with the lack of convenience vs automatically uploading everything via your phone's bluetooth
Edit, may not be entirely laziness: see this response to my question - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25787066
Also, I seem to remember long syncs timing out so many times in a row that I just had to factor-reset my FitBit HR to clear its data buffer. This happened more than once. It really needs an incremental sync.
When I got my FitBit HR, my wife was interested in using my original FitBit. I proceeded to update its firmware right before I gave it to her, but the firmware update seems to have timed out and broken the FitBit. I recovered once with a factory reset, but a second firmware update attempt bricked it.
Honestly, IoT devices need minimal firmware in non-brickable ROM that checksum the firmware in flash before jumping to the firmware in flash. If the checksum fails, then make a light blink and go into a recovery mode that implements a minimal Bluetooth or HTTP firmware update, preferably incremental, requiring minimal state, and recoverable/restartable if that minimal state gets corrupted. Back in the day, I bricked a WRT54G router by using Firefox to upload the firmware instead of Safari or I.E. (It was a known non-deterministic issue, apparently. I'm guessing a corner-case in the router's handling of chunked HTTP encoding.) Not even the trick of shorting two adjacent pins using an x-acto knife could get the recovery TFTP server to come up.
Also, during the first year warranty period, my FitBit HR died twice, presumably due to being splashed so much with salt water during dragon boat race practice. I know it says not to go swimming with it, but you should really avoid excessively splashing it with seawater. When my FitBit HR died a third time shortly after the warranty period, I gave up on FitBit for a while.
"Imagine there was no such thing as a library, and that members of the current neoliberal policy consensus were to sit down today and invent it. They might create complicated tax expenditures to subsidize the poor purchasing and reselling books, like the wage support of the earned income tax credit. They might require people to rent books from approved private libraries, with penalties for those who don’t and vouchers for those who can’t afford it, like the individual mandate in the latest expansion of health care. They might come up with a program where they take on liability for books that go missing from private libraries and thereby boost profits for lenders themselves, like federally backed private student loans. Or maybe they’d create means-tested libraries only accessible to the poor, with a requirement that patrons document how impoverished they are month after month to keep their library card. Maybe they’d exempt the cost of private library cards from payroll taxes, or let anything calling itself a library pay nothing in taxes."
I'm not saying that they'll 100% kill off Fitbit, but it's very likely. Google already does hardware and software that does a lot of the same stuff, no point in having 2 brands.
If you click through to the EU site
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...
and read "Google's Commitment" on ads:
> Google will not use for Google Ads the health and wellness data collected from wrist-worn wearable devices and other Fitbit devices of users in the EEA, including search advertising, display advertising, and advertising intermediation products. This refers also to data collected via sensors (including GPS) as well as manually inserted data.
So this only covers European Economic Area, and it only covers Google Ads.
However, there are probably ways they can leap around that. For instance, new devices and a new platform, using the Fitbit talent and technology, but marketed as a new thing, could probably be used for advertising. Then they just need to get everyone over to their new health platform.
I also think a ten year commitment is a very poor concession for the EU to have extracted: It just means they're punting off society being harmed a while. For a company that will likely be around in 100 years or more, IBM-style, that's not a good concession.
I agree, but if they were in the business of extracting significant pro-consumer concessions, I can see some weird incentives building up: imagine a dystopian future in several decades where the only semi-pro-consumer companies are the goliaths that have decades’ worth of accumulated concessions, and consumer startups nearly-universally act in their own financial interest, making them unusable for people who care about their data/privacy/ads/etc., and regulators who are unwilling to burden startups with regulations that restrict them from competing with AmaGoogleFlix.
Swipe right from workout screen.
(Finger moves right to left... not sure if that is swipe right or left :)
I have a friend who works for the government and laments at how much red tape there is to acquire or link any dataset and wishes for more data acquisition.
To be fair, her use cases were sincerely benign - being able to target people who qualify for more welfare/govt assistance, and being able to make the govt website more helpful/discoverable for support.
Though she definitely subscribes to her data being used for helpful purposes from bigtech
But...it would also greatly increase the damage any hacker could do.
Same applies to Google. It’s super convenient to have everything “on Google”. Until the day Google is exposed/hacked/turns evil. Then it’s a disaster.
Hoping the above won’t happen is not a strategy but a gamble.
You mean this hasn't already happened?
Life's a gamble. Crossing the road on your way to work is gamble. Heck it's a gamble that you won't be taken out in the next 12 months by an insidious disease.
The bet I have placed personally is that Google is better at looking after my personal data that I am - so for example I use gmail instead of my own email server.
I think you'll find a lot of smart tech people do, but don't post on HN because it disagrees with the prevalent view so you just get downvoted, or called an astroturfer.
The PineTime is a huge downgrade from pretty much everything on the market. It's only good, at least for now, as a platform to prototype on.
Not really, no. Very popular Mi Band 1 up to Mi Band 5 are very much on-par in terms of hardware. The software just has to catch up and that's probably coming.
If the project is successful, a PineTime 2 with some minor HW upgrades would be doable. Then it would take much less time because now there's a community and software out there that can be reused.
Your Apple Watch or Google Wear OS will give you a day or two.
Garmin arguable comes closest, but they're expensive as they have GPS trackers and other features, but I don't find their OS intuitive.
This post is a tutorial on how not to handle an acquisition! It's generally a bad sign for an acquisition if staff from the parent company say words like that they are "fighting to impose the parent companies culture and conventions"!
It's an acquisition, but companies are made of people, and just because a parent company does something one way doesn't mean that it will fit the company they have acquired.
Take the acquisition of Disney & Pixar. Steve Jobs stated that he wouldn't sign up to the acquisition if it meant that Disney culture would be imposed, because “Disney’s culture [would] destroy Pixar and distraction will kill Pixar's creativity". The whole structure of how the acquisition was planned was to ensure that Pixar maintained creative control and autonomy, and wasn't bulldozed by Disney Corporate.
I've lived through an acquisition too - the real factor to success is to listen and learn from each other, and build a shared way of working. Unless you are buying a failing company, you have to appreciate that they are doing something right and know their own company more than you do. And if it means you use tabs and they use spaces, that's fine.
It's legal basically anywhere in the United States, as most states follow at-will employment laws. Is it even surprising that young people (20s-30s) job hop every 2-3 years?
A lot of the developers I know rotate between contracting and FTE work. They're FTE timeframes line up with your assertion. They stay at one place, get some new tech knowledge, work a few projects and then move on after a few years.
The think the age range has greatly expanded though since most of my group is in their mid 30's now. Maybe more people are starting to contract younger so to them, they see it as a more normalized work career than some other people who want to get one gig, settle in and be there for 20+ years?
Consent is a two-party thing. Both parties must consent to a transaction for the transaction to be consensual.
Apple is a hardware company. They don’t want your data and store it begrudgingly because to them it’s nothing but liability. Whenever they can, they will encrypt your data in a way they can’t access in order to not be liable. Their devices are the product, not you.
Based on the above, which company would you trust more?
Apple makes 2 billion a year on advertising projected to go up to 11 billion in 5 years. While a fraction of total rev, I don’t think it’s correct to round off 2 billion and say they are somehow not an advertising company as well. (You don’t have to be just 1 type of company)
Apple is attempting to steal the concept of computing and turn it into a protected, arcane art.
You can't even run your own software on a device you own. That's a sure sign of a company that loves you and has your best interests at heart.
Apple is just as cutthroat as any. They only want your money.
They are both cutthroat but Apple specifically has taken a stance on privacy.
But just because I try to be vigilant and also try to block adverts, doesn't mean that I should be ok with them having my data. Just because they haven't figured out a way to trick me yet doesn't mean they won't later or that they won't become even more egregious later. Besides, its a business model I find unethical, so I want to distance myself from it as much as possible, and them not having data on me is part of that.
I don't get relevant ads anymore, but instead I get lowest-common-denominator ads. It's... worse!
I don't like the idea of targeted ads, but the consequence feels pretty minimal I have to say. The worst thing that happens is I buy a product that I turn out not to be happy with / wasn't worth the money?
If regretted purchases were rampant it'd be a problem worth solving, but it doesn't seem to be.
Just some thoughts I've been exploring. I'm not exactly planning on going back to wilfully being tracked.
I also feel that while you and I may be doing ok avoiding this stuff, many people don’t including old people and children. That’s not ok. I know that’s off topic here, but the more data google and about us, the less likely it will be that we can protect ourselves or others from this.
There's a difference between non-violent crimes (white collar crimes usually) and victimless crimes (possessing a small amount of controlled substances).
If someone breaks their spouse's ribs through domestic abuse, you'd apparently agree they need to be imprisoned.
But if someone steals someone else's identity and entire savings, ruins their identity, robs them of the ability to get another job or take out loans, which then results in them being unable to pay for medical treatment for their child, who dies, followed by their own suicide, I'd argue that's a far more tragic outcome, resulting from what you're categorizing as a "nonviolent crime". I'd argue that the latter crime is much more damaging, and should perhaps be treated as such in the justice system.
What you're saying is closer to an utopian ideal or who knows, something at least 50 years from now, in the future? :-)
White collar crime kills more people than violent crime by multiple orders of magnitude.
"White Collar" crimes absolutely could entail jail time if the offender has proven themselves to be untrustworthy and would continue to commit said crimes if allowed to be free
Jail should be used to protect the population from offenders, far too often however it is used for many other purposes including to punish people for "victimless" crimes or for being poor (like the inability to pay parking ticket)
Google would have absolutely no issue creating quality fitbit devices. Whether or not the market would be there for them to stay in long term, I don't know.
Or those wonderful Android Watches, sorry wearOS, never mind, they aren't getting proper updates for ages now.
The Chromecast works well most of the time. The ways it fails is ridiculous.
EDIT - never mind, Asus made both of those
Asus did make both, but I'm not sure either was as good as you recall, sadly.
Seems to be a finished-ish enterprise product now.
Hard to continue developing a product when the most talented people in the company have gone elsewhere already. They need the human capital in order to make sure it stays afloat and they get the requisite knowledge transfer.
Then its anybody's guess what will happen. Google's track record of buying technology and then doing something better with it is not encouraging at all.
Err...what? Earth, Maps, Docs, Waymo, Android, YouTube, WebRTC, Flights, Deepmind all come from acquisitions.[1]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
Personally, I'm curious how that worked out for them. The announcement of this purchase, and how they handled Nest, is what made me stop using my Fitbit.
Considering how absolutely dreadful Google's hardware (pixel line, pixel watch) is nowadays, and how unfinished all of their software is, no, Google would not be able to make any of that in a few months.
Which brings us to the second point... At minimum you should be fined, at least to cover interest gained while you held the money, probably more to cover emotional distress and otherwise.
Plus, at those kinds of sums, we're somewhere into "stole pension money territory" where we're only a few minutes away from "old lady took her own life after losing life savings".
So things are a lot murkier than they might seem.
Every company uses my data for analytic purposes. Ads that I do see in google play are almost same as I see in apple store. Both take my data and try to serve me the best. In fact, I don't think it's necessary evil but what bothers me is pretending that one company save my data better or make me believe they don't analyse my data.
Everybody does it, who says it does not analyse your data, he is lying.
You know apple has news-advertising and searchads that is based on iAds[1] ? Trust me, they need your data to work properly!
Look it all comes down to trust and I see way fewer reasons to trust Google than Apple. Both deserve a baseline measure of mistrust, but Google has all the incentive to spy on you while Apple has little to none. And when it comes to investigations of “why do you have this data in the first place?” Google’s answer is “we need it to advertise” while Apple’s can only be “we need it for this specific service” and if they fail to show why, they are liable. Google and Facebook have a virtually identical business model: collect, aggregate, advertise. If you don’t trust Facebook, why would you trust Google?
I did have some issues recently with being unable to pair it with specific Samsung phones, but it's a combination of it getting old and I assume issues with Google killing software (I don't want your Google Home !).
In a way I have worse issues with my Pebble Time… which Google now owns, to my displeasure. (But it is probably more open, so I have better chances fixing the issues myself in the long term…)
No idea what LEA stands for but apple did not encrypt after FBI complain: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
> dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in the company's iCloud service after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations
If you are referring to FBI-Apple dispute, if apple is complying with Chinese government, it will comply with USA government. That is how things are.
I'm not defending google, far away from it. They are not much better but they protect user data exactly because apple make fun of them. They now do extreme measures just to protect the privacy so they will not destroy their reputation even more.
Sure, but they did come in and add real innovation to the product; for example, adding a secret microphone that wasn't disclosed to the customer.
At least Netflix asks you every few hours if you’re still alive. YouTube will happily play you videos forever.
And they’re only a sliver of the company.
That's actually not true, at least in playlists. I regularly get the "Are you still watching" or whatever it is for YouTube when I put on music playlists.