Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#471

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

arbitrary_name wrote: post #423

samastur wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It took years after the first iPhone launched in the US for it to be available in peripheral markets. The hardware supply chain capability at Google is beginning to ramp up, but is nowhere near the maturity it needs to be to support a global rollout.

Apple sold 10 million phones the first year it was introduced in a much smaller market with only three or four carriers worldwide.....

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#472

Post by ithinkiknowthis » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #301

judge2020 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google fully deletes their user data when requested, I'm not sure why malice over data retention is being assumed here.

Do they? Or do they just anonymize it? Companies don't like to destroy assets. I don't think anybody is assuming malice, just incompetence. There are precedents after all.

Disclaimer: I work at Google.

And even on the smaller service I work on, we go through privacy review. Generally user-data is coupled to user account identifiers and deleted when accounts are deleted.

This is the easiest, as your retention plan is automatically approved this way :)

All data stores are mapped to retention plans. So you don't accidentally forget something.

For anonymization there is some logic which ensures the smallest slice is small enough that users can't be identified.

Now, all of this is generally and of course there are exceptions -- but these are a lot of work to get. You need to have good reasons to get exceptions, it takes a long time. So if you want to ship on time, you delete data when it's no longer needed, etc.

Exceptions are usually when it would hurt another user to delete something shared, for example..

Sure, incompetence can happen. But Google doesn't have a lengthy record of security holes, data leaks or privacy issues. (I'm sure you can find a few, but my point is that this isn't Yahoo)

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#473

Post by SlowRobotAhead » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

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…

>You may think you have a product but you don't.

I absolutely agree with everything.

Here is the thing, total side topic - but Fitbit's product is really excellent!

The packaging of the PCBs, the operating system, the tech, it's all really impressive.

I know that means nothing in the larger scope, Google bought them for their data and mining potential.

But the product is actually really cool. It appears to be simple, but when you deep drive, you can run your own javascript code on your own device, and serialize the data with packages like CBOR for export... This was done a micro that's running an RTOS made in C on an extremely constrained resources device.

I've always been impressed with Fitbit.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#474

Post by itfrombit » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

peonicles wrote: post #369

braythwayt wrote: post #126

John Gruber^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Dan Lyons^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Steve Ballmer had another colourful analogy, he used it in response to companies claiming that a merger would create a powerhouse to challenge the market leader: "It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster." (Thanks to "raldi" f…

I had to google for what "^H" meant. Found an interesting answer and backstory: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/386870.html

I used to joke that I was going to have "stty erase ^H" etched on my gravestone. It's probably been 25+ years since I've last needed to type that, but I can still hammer it out crazy fast. Sadly, that muscle memory is taking up neurons that'll never be used for anything else.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#475

Post by whynaut » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #356

criddell wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? Or do they just anonymize it? Companies don't like to destroy assets. I don't think anybody is assuming malice, just incompetence. There are precedents after all.

I don't think merely anonymizing data when the user requested deletion is GDPR compliant.

Does GDPR cover generated insights about that data?

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#476

Post by harikb » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

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…

1. Just so we are clear, after having gone through 5 "lifetimes" of fitbit and probably 15 across the family, one thing I can tell you is that the software is buggy with no end in sight. Fitbit could definitely use better software.

2. If Google didn't integrate their Auth, the same community will be complaining about the lack of compatibility.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#477

Post by sgarman » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

aembleton wrote: post #190

bransonf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you actually are looking for another option, my bias is toward Garmin.

Or Amazfit

Everyone in here yelling about google stealing their data but it's ok if china does it: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/huami#section-overvi...?

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#478

Post by omk » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

hugi wrote: post #446

habitue wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as in, Google didn't buy you just for the team 2.1B isn't an acquihire. They want the customers, the team, and the manufacturing chain at the very least.

Nah, what they want is me, ie. my data. I'm throwing away that fitbit (Google Personal information gathering device) and deleting my account. I'm informed enough to make that decision. Unfortunately thousands of users that just got sold out are not. Fuck Google.

I moved to iOS to be Google free. Have been happy with my Fitbit until I read this news and went through this exact sentiment. Happy to be part of a vocal minority.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#479

Post by clairity » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

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…

> “I actually agree with other commenters: Google just doesn't know what it's about anymore. It has no overriding vision.”

it’s pretty apparent to me that after google finally got over wanting to be facebook, google now wants to be apple. and they’re desperately trying not to be microsoft, even though that’s what they mostly are.

in the beginning, google had a unique identity (quirky & clever) and vision (organize the world’s information). now they look to others to figure out who to be. it’s like the small town high school football star who never moved on.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#480

Post by Rapzid » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

gniv wrote: post #439

Rapzid wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> you can just smash

I think you may have glossed over the "just". Of course they "can" but it's not "ergo" in the sense that 1 + 1 = 2 ergo you are now better than the 1.5 company.

I don't view the tunnel as being the optimistic antithesis of the turkey or runner analogy. The other two are not meant to be postulations pending mathematical proofs but critiques on simplistic thinking.