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Fitbit is now officially part of Google

blog.fitbit.com

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Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google

#241

Post by dwighttk »

nxc18 wrote: post #161
Dig1t wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why it's difficult for them to compete with Apple and Samsung isn't readily apparent to me. There still seems to be a large hole in the smartwatch market for a GOOD Android-compatible smartwatch. There are a lot of options, but, to me, none of them are as polished or feature-heavy as the Apple Watch. It doesn't seem that one of these companies would need access to any special internal APIs or anything to b…

Unpopular opinion here, but I think the Fitbit versa (from 2018) was/is better than Apple Watch (latest) in significant ways, even when paired with iPhone. I replaced my versa with Apple Watch when the versa died. I don’t necessarily regret it, but it didn’t feel like an upgrade and came with significant downsides. In particular, Fitbit gives far more control over notifications, especially for built-in apps like mess…

>...media controls easily accessible - on Apple Watch, they’re always moving and hard to get back to especially during a workout.

Swipe right from workout screen.

(Finger moves right to left... not sure if that is swipe right or left :)

Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google

#242

Post by dragonwriter »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #240
IgorPartola wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha I literally laughed out loud at this. Google making products. Have you seen how they make products? They have killed more physical products than they have delivered. They discontinue them more frequently than an average person throws out a napkin. Their first gen products are usually overpriced trash (Google Glass? Nexus Q?). If Google could pump out electronics with the speed and quality of someone like Anker…

Glass was never a finished product. It was sold as a dev kit that non-devs snapped up.

> Glass was never a finished product.

Seems to be a finished-ish enterprise product now.

https://www.google.com/glass/start/

Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google

#243

Post by jakereps »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #123
j0ba wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fitbit was getting killed and would likely have gone out of business If this is a reason for acquisition, then why wouldn't G*gle wait until they were "killed" so they could come in and buy their business for pennies on the dollar? We're fast approaching a dystopian Snow Crash world of all-powerful corporations, and you people are cheering it along. How can these both be true? - it's bad all US legacy media is owne…

>If this is a reason for acquisition, then why wouldn't G*gle wait until they were "killed" so they could come in and buy their business for pennies on the dollar? Because what Google wants to buy is their marketshare and existing userbase. I very much doubt fitbit has any tech or products google couldn't make themselves in a few months. The longer fitbit sucks compared to their competition the lower that becomes.

>Because what Google wants to buy is their marketshare and existing userbase.

Personally, I'm curious how that worked out for them. The announcement of this purchase, and how they handled Nest, is what made me stop using my Fitbit.

Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google

#244

Post by oblio »

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #221
hajile wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say someone steal a billion dollars through fraud and hide it. What should be done? Should they just walk free? There's a difference between non-violent crimes (white collar crimes usually) and victimless crimes (possessing a small amount of controlled substances).

First things first, they could pay back the $1 billion?

First of all, that's not a deterrent, though. If I can steal your money and all I have to do is return it if you catch me, I'll keep doing it. So you need some sort of punishment on top.

Which brings us to the second point... At minimum you should be fined, at least to cover interest gained while you held the money, probably more to cover emotional distress and otherwise.

Plus, at those kinds of sums, we're somewhere into "stole pension money territory" where we're only a few minutes away from "old lady took her own life after losing life savings".

So things are a lot murkier than they might seem.

Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google

#245

Post by oblio »

freedomben wrote: post #82
eberkund wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you against jail-time for all non-violent white collar crimes or just negligence in the realm of technology companies? Please don't assume that anyone with a different view hasn't considered the significance of their position.

Yes, I am against jail for non-violent crimes. I'm open to modern non-medieval ideas even for violent crimes. I don't have the answers there, but I wish there were more people caring about this. So far it seems to be only the far left (I don't consider that an insult) and anarcho-capitalists, but I wish more people that fall into the middle somewhere (like myself) would think about this. Usually people don't think ab…

Not even the most liberal societies on Earth, usually the Scandinavian ones, go as far as you describe. And they do have a prison system meant for prevention of recidivism and reintegration into society.

What you're saying is closer to an utopian ideal or who knows, something at least 50 years from now, in the future? :-)

Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google

#246

Post by kenhwang »

tormeh wrote: post #232
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until the day Google [...] turns evil You mean this hasn't already happened?

I hear it's the least evil of the FAANGs. And then there are oil companies etc. I think relative to the average company Google's doing alright.

Now I'm curious what Apple and Netflix has done to deserve being considered as more evil than Google.

Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google

#247

Post by jsheard »

wlesieutre wrote: post #235
IgorPartola wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha I literally laughed out loud at this. Google making products. Have you seen how they make products? They have killed more physical products than they have delivered. They discontinue them more frequently than an average person throws out a napkin. Their first gen products are usually overpriced trash (Google Glass? Nexus Q?). If Google could pump out electronics with the speed and quality of someone like Anker…

They nailed the Nexus 7, but that was a while ago (2012 and 2013) EDIT - never mind, Asus made both of those

All the Nexus devices were made by third parties, it's when they switched to Pixel branding that they started designing them in-house.

Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google

#248

Post by 29083011397778 »

wlesieutre wrote: post #235
IgorPartola wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha I literally laughed out loud at this. Google making products. Have you seen how they make products? They have killed more physical products than they have delivered. They discontinue them more frequently than an average person throws out a napkin. Their first gen products are usually overpriced trash (Google Glass? Nexus Q?). If Google could pump out electronics with the speed and quality of someone like Anker…

They nailed the Nexus 7, but that was a while ago (2012 and 2013) EDIT - never mind, Asus made both of those

Were you thinking of the 2012 Nexus 7 with the poor-quality NAND that went bad within a couple years, rendering the tablet useless? Or the 2013 that had phantom/unregistering input due to (IIRC) general build-quality and flex issues?

Asus did make both, but I'm not sure either was as good as you recall, sadly.

Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google

#249

Post by andreilys »

reportingsjr wrote: post #238
IgorPartola wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha I literally laughed out loud at this. Google making products. Have you seen how they make products? They have killed more physical products than they have delivered. They discontinue them more frequently than an average person throws out a napkin. Their first gen products are usually overpriced trash (Google Glass? Nexus Q?). If Google could pump out electronics with the speed and quality of someone like Anker…

They have an entire hardware division that regularly churns out quite high quality consumer hardware: nest. They also have a pretty big hardware group that makes high performance servers and specialty hardware (TPU servers among other things). They have a few other hardware divisions as well. Google would have absolutely no issue creating quality fitbit devices. Whether or not the market would be there for them to st…

Nest was an acquisition so not the best example.

Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google

#250

Post by triceratops »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #214
halfdan wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, and they want to hire the talent that built the product. If Fitbit were already a sinking ship for too long most senior folks would have left.

Great point. Hard to continue developing a product when the most talented people in the company have gone elsewhere already. They need the human capital in order to make sure it stays afloat and they get the requisite knowledge transfer. Then its anybody's guess what will happen. Google's track record of buying technology and then doing something better with it is not encouraging at all.

> Google's track record of buying technology and then doing something better with it is not encouraging at all.

Err...what? Earth, Maps, Docs, Waymo, Android, YouTube, WebRTC, Flights, Deepmind all come from acquisitions.[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

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