Big move.
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That is a huge deal for wearables. I just hope some of the old Pebble staff are still there to show them how it should be done!
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Catch up move.
Will be interesting to see if Google manage this smoothly, or will we end up with multiple ‘AndroidFit’ OS on different Fitbits that can’t take to various versions of Android?
(Yes, I am an ‘Apple’ guy in this conversation).
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The blog says they aim to introduce “Made by Google” wearables to the market 
Don’t forget they recently acquired the Fossil smartwatch team as well, who I think included the Misfit team?
So basically Wear OS + Pebble + Fitbit + Fossil + Misfit = Future Made By Google wearables. That is quite the power team.
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Let’s hope it gets the final product lineup to a better standard. R-
I suspect that this has been on the cards for a while and that’s why Google and WearOS development have been quiet for a while regarding this area.
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They’re not messing around and, quite honestly, it’s about bloody time too. Samsung have been allowed to get a massive market share (see post on Samsung Pay for example) on phones Google should be dominating on.
Hopefully we will see the result in the next year or so and get the long awaited Pixel Watch
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Honestly, WearOS was brilliant when it first came out in 2014. I thought the UX was fantastic on the original G-Watch, and I kept that watch for about 3 years.
But I think the hardware just wasn’t there to support the vision. As a result, it seems they had to compromise the OS, and they made increasingly bizarre changes that they’d then backtrack on. The current version of WearOS needs a radical rethink back to some of the original guiding principles IMO.
I expect that, with this announcement, they’ll effectively start from scratch with WearOS from a UX point of view. And so they should.
To be fair to Google - I actually think that Apple’s watchOS has historically been terrible too. I intensely dislike the bubble UI.
But to their credit they’ve stuck mostly to the same principles and regularly iterated on them, and the Series 5 actually looks decent.
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Here is hoping for a a top notch wear os
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No Notches please, there’s only limited space to begin with…
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Lets hope they dont mess this up the same way they messed up Works with Nest
Time to close the FitBit Pay thread? I feel Google has that covered.
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better keep it open until there is more news
SO. MUCH. DATA.
That’s the play by google.
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Just had my “valued customer” e-mail from Fitbit informing me of the acquisition. R-
Yes, they will definitely kill FitBit Pay.
I think it is very likely that Google will kill Fitbit Pay and that as a result it may not be worth us committing development time to it. But we will see how it plays out. Right now we don’t have plans for any further NFC payment options regardless.
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RIP Fitbit. Looks like I need to get replacement scales. I really really dislike the data hoovering google does.
If Apple adds sleep monitoring on the next watch I will have no use for my Charge 2 which I got for a huge discount because they couldnt replace my Charge HR when it broke again and again and again.
I can also see google blocking the api that allowed me to port data to healthkit. They have borked nest and now they are going for fitbit, its one way to get rid of competition for their wear watches I guess.
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If you’re worried about them hovering data then I hope you don’t have any loyalty cards too, as their sole purpose is data and a link to you as a customer.
If you use Facebook it’s the same. And Apple might say they are better but you can bet many app providers are hovering data.
On the original subject, I really like this move. I do love the apple watch but it would be good for another company to enter that market with enough cash and skill to bring something good to the market. They also kinda had to do something as their watch software needs improving.
Facebook runs in a special browser container, the tracking pixel is blocked on sites. Google analytics is blocked and any google account stuff runs in its own container. Loyality cards are mostly dead and apps have very limited tracking using a filter I have applied so yeah I take it seriously but I am in the tech business so I know more about this stuff than most which is why I wont go google as my data is mine.
GDPR and SAR rights are also very useful.
So with this buy once the big terms update comes trying to port all the data into google I will be ripping out fitbit in this house and advising others to avoid as well. You never know though google may not be evil but we will see, dont hold out much hope after the nest disasters.
Tbf google did need to do something about its wear approach so its good for that.