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Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

cnbc.com

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Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#161

Post by bjornjaja »

kerng wrote: post #46

Vic Gundotra (VP Google) said back when Microsoft bought Nokia that "two turkeys don't make an eagle". Google officially has become the Microosft of the mid 2000s. Lack of direction and innovation, buying up companies just for the sake of it. Here is a link to Google's anology: https://www.techspot.com/news/42338-google-attacks-nokia-and...

How do you know what they are going to do with Fitbit? Companies attacking others with rhetoric is no different than standard “vote for my comprehensive plan, not theirs” politics.

Truthfully, with AI chips in fitbits who knows what they’ll be able to use it for

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#162

Post by jsjohnst »

_ea1k wrote: post #147
jsjohnst wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue they’ve almost ruined Waze since acquiring it.

I tend to agree, but it has also improved Google Maps, so maybe it is still a plus for the business overall?

I agree Google Maps has improved, but I’m not convinced it was directly because of acquiring Waze. Waze UX has dropped so much since acquisition that its almost to the painful point. I also find it’s “user submitted” data (cops, construction, pot holes) has dropped a lot so I feel a lot of folks who were submitting quality data have either left or just stopped submitting as the UX has gotten so bad.

Keyhole is another acquisition in the mapping space that I feel has degraded since being acquired by Google. I was a paying customer of Keyhole and loved it, since becoming free under Google, it’s basically stagnated and some of the features I used are now gone.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#163

Post by raldi »

braythwayt wrote: post #140
raldi wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find this quote, or anything like it. Was it recent?

Not an exact quote, I'm going from memory. I believe it was many years ago.

It was actually Dan Lyons, as quoted by Gruber:

https://daringfireball.net/2008/02/devils_advocate

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#164

Post by dcbadacd »

bjornjaja wrote: post #161
kerng wrote: post #46

Vic Gundotra (VP Google) said back when Microsoft bought Nokia that "two turkeys don't make an eagle". Google officially has become the Microosft of the mid 2000s. Lack of direction and innovation, buying up companies just for the sake of it. Here is a link to Google's anology: https://www.techspot.com/news/42338-google-attacks-nokia-and...

How do you know what they are going to do with Fitbit? Companies attacking others with rhetoric is no different than standard “vote for my comprehensive plan, not theirs” politics. Truthfully, with AI chips in fitbits who knows what they’ll be able to use it for

Fitbit with Google's Soli sounds... futuristic the very least.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#165

Post by scarface74 »

slightwinder wrote: post #129
scarface74 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What long and successful history? The only one that I can think of that was a definite success is Android. Their only notable hardware acquisitions that I can think of were Motorola which was a disaster, Nest which is barely muddling along, and the semi-acquisition of HTC’s hardware team that made the Pixel. While the Pixel may be a great phone, it isn’t taking the world by storm

Google Maps, Google Earth, Youtube, Google Ads, all started from aquisitions, to name the big services. They have many more small services and features coming from aquisitions. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... for a good chronologic list.

Google ads - where they did advertising on their own site was homegrown. DoubleClick helped them expand to other sites. None of their hardware acquisitions have been successful. Android hadn’t developed a piece of hardware when it was acquired AFAIK.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#166

Post by samastur »

scarface74 wrote: post #81
slightwinder wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has a long and successful history of acquisitions, as also a long history of lack of direction and headless actions even in their youth days. It's probably just natural for a company with too much money to invest that way.

What long and successful history? The only one that I can think of that was a definite success is Android. Their only notable hardware acquisitions that I can think of were Motorola which was a disaster, Nest which is barely muddling along, and the semi-acquisition of HTC’s hardware team that made the Pixel. While the Pixel may be a great phone, it isn’t taking the world by storm

To be fair I don't think they are trying to make Pixel world-wide popular. If they did, they would sell it to more places (can't buy it here in Slovenia).

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#167

Post by hajile »

partiallypro wrote: post #114
kerng wrote: post #46

Vic Gundotra (VP Google) said back when Microsoft bought Nokia that "two turkeys don't make an eagle". Google officially has become the Microosft of the mid 2000s. Lack of direction and innovation, buying up companies just for the sake of it. Here is a link to Google's anology: https://www.techspot.com/news/42338-google-attacks-nokia-and...

I don't think this analogy really works here, the reason the Nokia acquisition didn't work is because it was too late. Microsoft was simply too late to make the necessary changes to compete on the OS level and they kept changing development kits entirely driving away developers and consumers.

The issues seem even deeper there.

In the US, the Nokia brand had basically disappeared outside of Symbian pre-paid feature phones which isn't a great association to have. In Europe, a lot of people seemed unhappy with the switch to Windows Phone and killing Meego/SwipeUI (the n9 sold gangbusters considering it wasn't available in any of the Nokia markets that could actually afford an expensive smartphone). Finally, lots of people were upset that Europe's flagship phonemaker was sold off to Microsoft and then gutted costing a ton of good-paying jobs.

Next, there's the general issue that the MS brand is a bit poisonous to a lot of people. Windows has (somewhat undeservedly) a pretty bad reputation with performance, bloat/slowdowns, and reliability. When Android and iOS basically "just work" and Windows not being necessary, not a lot of people want to deal with perceived potential issues (real or imaginary).

Finally, on the development side, most of the people making apps didn't seem keen on the Windows Phone platform and their passive neglect was a huge complication (supposedly, even multi-million dollar incentives couldn't get the devs on board).

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#168

Post by MBCook »

chrisfinazzo wrote: post #123
vader1 wrote: post #90

This is terrible news. As if Google didn't know enough about you already - they will now be supplied with a 24/7 live feed of your most sensitive health statistics. I'll be switching to a competitor and closing down my account there as soon as possible to hopefully prevent years of my historic data from being merged into the (ghost) profile Google has on me. But at this rate it won't be long before there are simply n…

To be fair, Apple does this too to some extent. However, given their most recent commercial re privacy and all of their public statements on the topic, I don't expect them to exploit it for profit quite so shamelessly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py0acqg1oKc

> they will now be supplied with a 24/7 live feed of your most sensitive health statistics.

In Apple land all health data stays on device, not in the cloud like Google/FitBit

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#169

Post by tomComb »

senko wrote: post #148
falcolas wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large established and (based on personal connections) loyal fan base is a failure? Growth is not everything. Growth isn’t even really sustainable over a long enough time span, and Fitbit’s been around awhile.

Not so loyal, also based on personal anecdotes: wife and me both had to have our fitbits replaced and with mine dead again, I'm looking at everything except Fitbit. Scouring forums full of people with bizarre problems with their devices (usually connection related tho that might be only a symptom), I get the impression I'm not an outlier. Fitbit built up a huge fan base but looks to me like it is now in the process o…

I've been getting the same impression. It's the sort of thing that can happen when a company is on hard times and cutting corners perhaps.

Glad to see them purchased by a company with deep pockets and a real interest in making Fitbit a success.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#170

Post by Avamander »

AgloeDreams wrote: post #121
devnonymous wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fitbit really only took off after the Pebble acquisition IMHO.

Oh no they owned the fitness tracker market prior, the initial Smartwatch product, the Ionic, was a flop, seemingly their launch of the Versa helped because it was a stylish smartwatch with the fitbit brand and focus, the software was still quite bad compared to Google and Apple's efforts. I would go further to say that Pebble's product was actually much better.

Versa also has hardware design errors, it allows water to leak in (trough HR sensor's bad adhesive seal) with regular use causing massive return rates.
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