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Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

cnbc.com

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Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#431

Post by angstrom »

achow wrote: post #408
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazon sees a lot more and all they really care about is what you view and what you buy. Everything else is noise with current tech.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#432

Post by hiei »

tma12345 wrote: post #402
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you share more? Perhaps some example or products?

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#433

Post by RandallBrown »

MereInterest wrote: post #380
kccqzy wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm under the impression that health data is not uploaded to iCloud or backed up by iCloud backup. What makes you think otherwise?

From https://www.apple.com/ios/health/ > Your health data stays up to date across all your devices automatically using iCloud, where it is encrypted while in transit and at rest. Apps that access HealthKit are required to have a privacy policy, so be sure to review these policies before providing apps with access to your health and fitness data. That it is uploaded and capable of being shared with apps implies that A…

I think all the decryption happens on the phone, so Apple can't actually see your iCloud data.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#434

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

tma12345 wrote: post #402
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I literally work in logging / analytics, so I do know a good bit about what we store and how we store it.

I didn't say that we don't store any personal data. That's ridiculous. Of course we store SOME personal data.

I said that we hardly store any data that we receive. Of what we store, we hardly store anything longer than 30 days. It's important to note that we receive an UNIMAGINABLE amount of data. Even a small fraction of a small fraction of that is still unimaginable amounts of data.

I don't know anything about our partnerships. I didn't say anything about that.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#436

Post by dang »

We changed the URL from https://twitter.com/JonErlichman/status/1190252267406069760 to an article which adds at least a little more information.

The press releases are https://blog.google/products/hardware/agreement-with-fitbit

and https://investor.fitbit.com/press/press-releases/press-relea...

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#437

Post by sah2ed »

cletus wrote: post #415
hcnews wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes and no. Sundar has no more vision than Larry does yet somehow is paid $200m+ a year and in my mind is the most unjustifiably overpaid CEO by a huge margin. At least Larry founded the company and contributed to turning into the behemoth it is. Sunday is a random associate product manager who somehow managed to ride the wave of Chrome to somehow becoming CEO.

> Sundar has no more vision than Larry does yet somehow is paid $200m+ a year and in my mind is the most unjustifiably overpaid CEO by a huge margin.

Do you have a source for this? My understanding is that this $200m figure is a multi-year figure to keep him at Google.

I wouldn’t characterize him as random though. Larry seemed to like him because he is able to handle conflict very well.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#438

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #424
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I'm new and just a lowly engineer, so I can't speak too much for the company. I do work in analytics / logging, so I do have pretty decent insights into our different storage systems and logging policies. The people that I interact with view data as a liability, not an asset. I think this is because of lawsuits mostly. We've been bitten by a few big ones. But also, storage is expensive, and even storing a Boo…

If you're actually a new engineer you might want to check your company policy on communicating details of internal systems in public; your external communications people probably don't allow you to speak about such things ... on the other hand, if you are allowed to talk about such things then you're probably just a persona adopted by someone in external comms. Take care!

It's not a trade secret that we store data. I'm not giving away anything that isn't already public information. This is literally me giving a summary of our Terms of Use.

As far as I know, I'm allowed to say that: people I work with tend to be liberal. As far I know, I'm also allowed to say that: people I work with tend to view data as a liability not an asset. It's also public information that Google receives billions of requests per day. For me to extrapolate on that and say that even storing a single bit of data on those logs starts to add up and cost a lot of money isn't a trade secret either. It's common sense.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#439

Post by gniv »

Rapzid wrote: post #390
gniv wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how this analogy is apropos. Here's another analogy that works the other way: Adding an extra tube to a single-tube tunnel improves the efficiency of the tunnel greatly. Why is the runner analogy better than this one?

Because your tunnel is not competing against a superior, dominant tunnel. EDIT: Also, the runner and eagle analogy seam to criticize the line of thinking that would lead people to assume you can just smash together two companies and end up with a company that is better than the current market leaders. The tube analogy doesn't touch on that at all..

> assume you can just smash together two companies and end up with a company that is better than the current market leaders

But you can. Think of regional phone companies (the baby bells), which merged and became dominant just by dent of natural monopoly.

Anyway, my analogy is exactly the opposite of that critique. It's the optimist's view (which is also the view of the decision-makers at the companies, so it's not to be dismissed easily).

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#440

Post by rednerrus »

ohazi wrote: post #374
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…

> detailed health data that users willingly provide. I'm skeptical that an accerometer on your wrist and maybe an optical heartrate monitor can really provide detailed health data. Honestly, most of the "personal health monitoring" consumer device companies are selling bullshit. They don't have purpose-built devices that are capable of monitoring specific health parameters as you sleep or as you work, they have a pil…

They do know how much you move and when you move. If I was selling health-related goods, I would really like to know who's thinking about getting healthy. Who's sticking to their goals, who are faltering. Are you up and moving around in the middle of the night. Are you having trouble sleeping. Are you stressed? All of these things could be extrapolated from the data they have.

Seems valuable to me. $2B valuable, I don't know.

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