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Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

reuters.com

221–230 of 538 posts

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#221
post #84
post #33

Oh no. First they f*cked up nest and now fitbit?

Nest seems to have only improved under Google? They were floundering before the purchase. That said, they ought to do Google auth integration as it's really annoying to maintain a separate Nest account for those products.

Not if you use GSuite or IFTTT it didn't

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#222

This wouldn't surprise me, Fitbit has been getting more and more "Googlish" in its slurping of data. My current irritation is that it refuses to 'sync' your device unless you have location services enabled for the app. I get that some folks like a "track" they can refer to, for others it puts their life at risk[1], and for me its not something I care about. Steps and heart rate are enough for it to compute calories (…

[deleted]

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#223
post #91

Very bad news for anyone who has a Fitbit device. Google tends to destroy any "smart" devices they acquire; first they tie it more closely to their ecosystem, too much for comfort, then they remove features, then they get bored and neglect it, then you have a brick.

Sad if that happens, but I doubt that's Google's intent/strategy. Presumably to spend money on an acquisition, Google must think the user base that goes along with the acquisition is valuable.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#224
post #136
post #91

Very bad news for anyone who has a Fitbit device. Google tends to destroy any "smart" devices they acquire; first they tie it more closely to their ecosystem, too much for comfort, then they remove features, then they get bored and neglect it, then you have a brick.

Hoping this doesn't happen with the Nest Thermostat. The good news is the install base is huge, so it's not like they can just quietly brick them and have no one notice.

They've recently adopted the Nest branding for Google Home Mini (now Google Nest Mini) so I doubt it.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait for my Pebble 2 I paid for via crowdfunding (shhh I know I got refunded) to get manufactured and shipped before the company decided to go out of business, not delivering the product they hyped, and sell themselves to FitBit.

Me too. I was all hyped up for my new Pebble 2 up until the money came back :/. I guess, at least they did refund us.

Yeah I was really excited. I left Apple's ecosystem when I switched to Project Fi and really did find my Gen1 Apple Watch useful, the Pebble 2 looked like it was going to handle the stuff I used the most on the Apple Watch and after having already been disappointed by an Android watch (ZenWatch 2) I was really looking forward to it.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#226
Oh i see what's happening...this is Google' play to place microphones onto the wrists of those who don't use android phones - via fitbits - in order to capture ever more info for ads!

Ah-ha google, you didn't think i saw where you were heading did you, eh!?! /s

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#227
post #91

Very bad news for anyone who has a Fitbit device. Google tends to destroy any "smart" devices they acquire; first they tie it more closely to their ecosystem, too much for comfort, then they remove features, then they get bored and neglect it, then you have a brick.

Sad if that happens, but I doubt that's Google's intent/strategy. Presumably to spend money on an acquisition, Google must think the user base that goes along with the acquisition is valuable.

It is. They see Apple and their watch amassing lots of data and they don't want to yield all that to them (like Apple's rationale to get into maps).

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#228
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hostile json format This is new. Is "hostile" referring to a data format that has been created to be as un-portable as possible? Feels like a more accurate description would be to just saw "poorly designed format" as you cannot know their intent (unless they published their intent of course)

Nothing to do with json, if someone wants then data can be always represented in hard to understand formats.

json is a good file format, but the way that fitbit exports the data is strangely partitioned by file and object depth. Machine readable certainly, but most machines will need a lot of guidance to turn it into a useful dataset.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#230
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I frankly wouldn't trust the numbers of any device that can't keep the time. Have you tried to verify them somehow?

Step counts as well as the fitbit. Heart rate is simple. How can it mess that up? Blood pressure is relative. You don't expect it to be accurate without a cuff. Same with O2. Those can show whether you're higher or lower "now" than you were an hour ago, a day ago, but they're not intended to be accurate on an absolute scale. Sleep seems to match up pretty well with snorelabs. Now that I think about it, I wonder how w…

I mean, I'm not expecting them to pay a full $1 to get an RTC that keeps time up to 1s/month, but still, 45s/day is a lot, and it implies they really cheapened out on either design or components. I would mistrust even the relative measurements.
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