And here I was considering getting fitbit... Could anyone suggest an alternative? I really have no trust that google will keep promise not to use the data. edit: thanks all, I have too look into it all back home.
Depends on what you want to do with it. If you just want a relatively dumb watch that tells the time, shows notifications and lasts for days, a Pebble may still be a good choice. The firmware has largely been reimplemented by the Rebble project, so you're guaranteed to be free.
If you want serious tracking and are prepared to spend a lot of money, Garmin makes good devices.
If you're okay with giving up data as long as it's not to Google, Jawbone and Mi fit devices are pretty close to Fitbit offerings.
YouTube, Doubleclick, Waze, and DeepMind were good acquisitions.
What exactly does DeepMind even do that provides investor ROI? I can't call it a good acquisition.
Deepmind Health was a pure-data play, like most Google acquisitions; including Fitbit ─ which might initially suggest it is a way to sell gadgets or a platform but reverse is true ie. it is a strategy albeit not a cohesive one, to acquihire and/or gain foothold in a sector, especially where it does not have a dominant presence, in order to integrate a disparate portfolio of existing services.
I don't know that that analogy follows, because agglomerations of thousands of people doing a complex task really aren't that comparable to two people doing one simple task. Taking one example I know of second-hand: My brother worked for the #2 company in his industry at the time they acquired #3 in an effort to overtake the market leader. It worked out disastrously. It turns out that #3, despite being the less profi…
Happened to a company I started working at. Long story short, I joined as an engineer when one 15 year old based company that was clearly still running like it was 1995 bought a lean tech startup with smart/focus people and proceeded to impose its really inefficient, old culture onto the newly acquired folk. Lots of clash, tons of shit talking, and people leaving left and right. The giant company ended up selling for…
Just one year? That's a brief stint to learn a lot of valuable lessons about organizational behavior. And you probably have some great stories.
It's easy to spend 3-5 years at a startup that implodes. One year is failing fast, and at least you got paid the whole time!
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
I haven't had a chance to really think this all the way through, but I have a few thoughts. Google seems to have more trouble absorbing companies that have many more parallels with what they're already doing. Makes sense. At the time Google acquired Android, they weren't really invested in mobile operating systems as far as I know. So Android was a pretty easy integration. The same was true for Motorola and I suppose to a lesser extent HTC. Those two companies were building hardware which Google wasn't as involved in at the time. Those companies were also doing the lowest level stuff i.e., hardware and operating systems. But Fitbit, Dropcam, and Nest are different. They have parallel efforts all the way down. They have their own hardware, operating system, authentication, and they have a non-trivial customer base. Bringing these all under one roof seems a lot more difficult. Even logging into Nest with your Google account took quite a few years. Google also has Android, ChromeOS, and Fuschia. I can't imagine that they now want Fitbit OS to deal with. Or maybe this is just a trivial detail to them i.e., they could just rewrite Fitbit OS over the weekend.
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 is undirected.
Google doesn't talk about it much, but the founders are still interested in the kind of non-dystopia cyberpunk future where a personal assistant is virtually perched on your shoulder, helping you get through your day like a non-invasive cyber-butler. It's the notion that drove Glass and drives Home and Assistant.
Having an in on medical observation technology fits into that mold. I doubt they'd publicize that as their goal until and unless they have something to show for it though.
"as someone stated"... Google has never released Youtube numbers, so I can't say that. I will tell you that youtube is the dominant video platform on the internet. You do realize Youtube shows ads? and those ads are part of google's ad revenue? But the numbers have been inferred "YouTube probably generates $16 billion to $25 billion in annual revenue"[1] Waze drives all of their google maps traffic data. Again, indus…
there are no ads on YT
What? A giant front page ad, one to two pre-roll ads (with accompanying banner ad in the sidebar), semitransparent text ads on the bottom of the video, and another video ad every 4-10 minutes in the video.
Personally I think they are great at finding interesting and relevant ads, which is why I don't block the ads. Howerver I hear the experience varies.
Well... what else does Fitbit's cloud store? How often you exercise? Where you do it? What sorts of exercise? Check out these running shorts, keep cool in the summer! Carbon fibre kayak paddles are on sale! Or, when it's noticed a lull, and kmows you're influencable: Hire this personal trainer to get you back exercising!
Highly targetted ads are not my concern here, they may even be welcome. Using heartrate, activity levels, mobilty can probably infer a broad picture of someones health, which of course, would be very valuable to health insurance/life assurance companies. With this level of privatised surveilance, I'll stick with my mechanical automatic watch thanks.
does google sell data or attention? the whole point of google/facebook ad networks is that THEY keep the data hidden and let you use it as a filter, without being able to see it. they would lose their value if their data was for sale.
google would sell "attention time to people whos heart rate spiked during the world series" but not tell the customers who those people were. you would be outing yourself if you click the ad.
And here I was considering getting fitbit... Could anyone suggest an alternative? I really have no trust that google will keep promise not to use the data. edit: thanks all, I have too look into it all back home.
Mi band 4 has best battery life and together with mi band tools app (search on play store) is great. To be honest, if there were custom opensource ROMs for mi band, they would destroy all alternatives.
Since you can use the band with open source apps (Gadgetbridge), the security and freedom aspects of a closed firmware fitness tracker is okay.
Of course it feels nicer to have software you know on your wrist. There are a few people who are interested in writing an own OS for the Amazfit Bip watch by Huami, which may (I'm not sure) also be the manufacturer of the bands. The project isn't really active, but maybe the motivation of some possible synergies would help.
I've been interested in tracking sleep/exercise/heart rate more closely, but have yet to find a manufacturer that takes privacy seriously. Whatever device I have should transfer data only to computers that are under my control. No matter how pure the intentions of the current maintainers of centralized databases, acquisitions can lead to those databases being in unscrupulous hands.
> have yet to find a manufacturer that takes privacy seriously What's wrong with Apple then?
Whatever device I have should transfer data only to computers that are under my control.
It might be possible to keep the data local, but it is likely to be neither easy, nor easy to NOT end up accidentally linking it to iCloud. Where I personally don't have a problem with those data living on Apple's servers, parent obviously does.
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...
What has Vic ever done to be mentioned as thought leader?