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Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

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Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#401

Post by hcnews »

cletus wrote: post #325

Oof. Goodbye Fitbit. Or, rather, welcome to the world where you're a pawn in internal politics. You may think you have a product but you don't. If your product survives (as in, Google didn't buy you just for the team), your product schedule will have to survive the interests of every other PA/team in Google. - You think you have software to run your products? Ha. The Android team will have a different opinion. - Even…

Sundar has been leading Google for a few years now. Larry/Sergey have been out and about for a while now.

I am a Xoogler myself.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#402

Post by tma12345 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #395
cdnsteve wrote: post #339

Google makes 80% of revenue from ads. It covers the entire web with adsense/adwords, records anything you search, has users login to chrome, scans gmail for purchase history, tracks your gps location and where you live and work with your commute + waze.. plus much more through android. It has microphones in homes and knows about all your iot devices with nest, it knows about any other online accounts you have because…

As someone who works at Google and who used to think these things were true, I can say that most of this is simply not true. We store hardly any data about users. Far from everything we get. Of the things we store, hardly anything gets stored longer than 30 days. So, no, we do not store a constant audio stream from everything in your house for all of eternity. We don't store every website you visit in chrome for all…

Throw away account...

As someone who works with Google partners and partnering with Google's data, we see a lot of personal data in it.

You simply might be someone that doesn't work with such data. I do and we use a lot of it and it gets very personal.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#403

Post by ClutchBand »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #395
cdnsteve wrote: post #339

Google makes 80% of revenue from ads. It covers the entire web with adsense/adwords, records anything you search, has users login to chrome, scans gmail for purchase history, tracks your gps location and where you live and work with your commute + waze.. plus much more through android. It has microphones in homes and knows about all your iot devices with nest, it knows about any other online accounts you have because…

As someone who works at Google and who used to think these things were true, I can say that most of this is simply not true. We store hardly any data about users. Far from everything we get. Of the things we store, hardly anything gets stored longer than 30 days. So, no, we do not store a constant audio stream from everything in your house for all of eternity. We don't store every website you visit in chrome for all…

Data in what state? Does data need to be stored long-term to be used in analytics? The outcomes of those analytics is the data that is needed and would need to exist for a time, but the day-to-day, I don't know why you would expect all that to hang around.

Google isn't making money from selling actual raw user data, its selling data about that data.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#404

Post by blotter_paper »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #395
cdnsteve wrote: post #339

Google makes 80% of revenue from ads. It covers the entire web with adsense/adwords, records anything you search, has users login to chrome, scans gmail for purchase history, tracks your gps location and where you live and work with your commute + waze.. plus much more through android. It has microphones in homes and knows about all your iot devices with nest, it knows about any other online accounts you have because…

As someone who works at Google and who used to think these things were true, I can say that most of this is simply not true. We store hardly any data about users. Far from everything we get. Of the things we store, hardly anything gets stored longer than 30 days. So, no, we do not store a constant audio stream from everything in your house for all of eternity. We don't store every website you visit in chrome for all…

From the perspective of a user this sounds positive, but do you have any idea why they don't store more data? Worry about public backlash? Lawsuits over data breaches? There would seem to be a financial incentive to store more given how cheap storage is and the fact that seemingly unimportant data could be useful in future models.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#405

Post by corford »

cknoxrun wrote: post #221
slightwinder wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely, and I would add Google Analytics to that list of "big services" as well.

Ah yes, urchin! God that's a blast from the past.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#406

Post by scarface74 »

chenning wrote: post #344
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

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…

Motorola was sold at a loss and estimates are that Google barely sells 1-2 million Pixels a year - about the same number that Apple sells in a day or two.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#407

Post by bobajeff »

tmikaeld wrote: post #285
bobajeff wrote: post #117

>Google has made progress with partners in this space with Wear OS and Google Fit, but we see an opportunity to invest even more in Wear OS as well as introduce Made by Google wearable devices into the market. I think it's pretty clear Google hasn't made much progress with Wear OS. Otherwise they wouldn't have needed to buy both Fossil and Fitbit. Maybe they should just use Fitbit OS and scale it up this time.

Maybe they will put Fuchsia on it?

I think for now they should just add Flutter support to Fitbit OS.

That way they keep the OS that works while also making it scale up to support more advanced apps. Also, when Fuchsia is ready they'll have a clearer migration path.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#408

Post by achow »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #395
cdnsteve wrote: post #339

Google makes 80% of revenue from ads. It covers the entire web with adsense/adwords, records anything you search, has users login to chrome, scans gmail for purchase history, tracks your gps location and where you live and work with your commute + waze.. plus much more through android. It has microphones in homes and knows about all your iot devices with nest, it knows about any other online accounts you have because…

As someone who works at Google and who used to think these things were true, I can say that most of this is simply not true. We store hardly any data about users. Far from everything we get. Of the things we store, hardly anything gets stored longer than 30 days. So, no, we do not store a constant audio stream from everything in your house for all of eternity. We don't store every website you visit in chrome for all…

I think it is not about storing data but it is about learning from it.

After you learn that I'm into fitness (or vice versa) and manage to serve me an article in a news feed and direct me to a health blog (served by Google ad sense), then job of the data is done.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#409

Post by cletus »

taurath wrote: post #353
cletus wrote: post #325

Oof. Goodbye Fitbit. Or, rather, welcome to the world where you're a pawn in internal politics. You may think you have a product but you don't. If your product survives (as in, Google didn't buy you just for the team), your product schedule will have to survive the interests of every other PA/team in Google. - You think you have software to run your products? Ha. The Android team will have a different opinion. - Even…

They don’t care about the product in so much as they care about the avenue to suck up more data, no?

Actually, no. I find this whole "they're selling your data" trope to be trite and just annoying at this point.

I actually expect this more a reaction to Apple's pivot into health with the Apple Watch (people seem to forget the ex-Burberry CEO positioned the Apple Watch 1 as a luxury product--anyone remember the Apple Watch Edition for $10k?--health came later).

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#410

Post by longerthoughts »

CydeWeys wrote: post #367
qubex wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Argument by analogy is very powerful and utterly fallacious” — my high-school Theory Of Knowledge teacher (Mr Dawson you’re the best) That said, I’m really not enthused by this under either the business (relevant case history: Nest) or privacy perspective.

A common antipattern here in HN comments is someone using an analogy (which is almost always bad), and then the responses devolving into arguing over how the analogy isn't correct. I honestly think a "no analogies" rule for commenting would do more to facilitate good discussion than the existing "no jokes" rule. Analogies are almost never useful. Even the ancient Greeks realized this.

Analogies can sometimes be a useful supplement to make an argument easier to digest, they just shouldn't be used as a substitute for a coherent argument. The latter tends to lead to what you're describing here:

>A common antipattern here in HN comments is someone using an analogy (which is almost always bad), and then the responses devolving into arguing over how the analogy isn't correct.

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