If someone from Fitbit is reading this: It is asinine that the data from my wearable has to go to my phone, up to the cloud, and back down to my phone for display.
Fitbit is now officially part of Google
251–260 of 387 posts
Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lol Amazon's Ring ? Amazon also acquired Ring. Maybe do some research before trying to score Internet points.
LOL maybe they'll see this and hire you, simp Also, the juxtaposition was meant to highlight the various competitors in the space, not necessarily to say that those don't also acquire companies to gain share.
I like the name calling when your point is called out. But sure it is "cool" to abuse people now I guess. Did you call out Amazon as well ?
Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google
#253Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google
#254Earlier 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 acquired and was already a mature and popular product. They by no means built it from scratch. And enterprise server products are probably outside the scope of what we are talking about, which is consumer electronics. I can build you a pretty decent server pretty quickly. I wouldn't know where to start to create a smart watch that had good battery life, great screen, great app ecosystem, great sensors, and didn't cost over $400. As far as I know, no consumer electronics Google product had launched and was an instant success. All the first product reviews I've ever read sounded like this: "it's a great first start and as a nerd who knows about these things I enjoyed some innovative parts of it, but it's not ready for prime time. Maybe next year they'll have a more polished product."
Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google
#255The question now: how soon before my fitness tracker stops working? (Given Google's track record)
Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google
#256Earlier 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.
Right. My point exactly. Google releases half baked consumer goods, then kills them later if they aren't a hugely important strategic line (like the Nexus/Pixel) or not a runaway success. The idea that Google could build a fitness tracker or smartwatch from scratch in a matter of months and it would be better than what FitBit currently has to offer just seems silly.
Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google
#257One thing that confuses me is why this data needs to be stored within the internet at all. Why can't I have an entirely offline driven system? Data stays local, no ability to upload it online at all, and all processing is done without ever needing the internet. That's a key criteria if I ever was thinking of getting a smart wearable, I'm not going to generate even more data that can be profited from and potentially u…
Look into Gadgetbridge and the devices it supports. I ended getting a Mi Band 5 for $35 off of amazon. No data sent beyond the phone. The band works without a phone too.
Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
They haven't done much better with many of these. And I suspect these would also have succeeded independently of Google.
Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google
#259One thing that confuses me is why this data needs to be stored within the internet at all. Why can't I have an entirely offline driven system? Data stays local, no ability to upload it online at all, and all processing is done without ever needing the internet. That's a key criteria if I ever was thinking of getting a smart wearable, I'm not going to generate even more data that can be profited from and potentially u…
Fitbit is very much a social network, where you can challenge your friends etc. It is very much a selling point to the device. So in the case of Fitbit the user data being online is vital.
Re: Fitbit is now officially part of Google
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm not really trying to come out against Netflix here, but I personally think their desire to compete with every other way one could spend their time doesn't have human's best interests at heart. I recognize the agency (most) everyone has to spend their time as they will, but I don't like how I feel mentally if all my free time gets sucked into consuming content. YMMV