Google has been playing a long game of shutting down Fitbit, but it’s taken a big step now that it’s shutting down the company’s website. This means the main place to learn about Fitbits online is now via a third-party retailer like Best Buy or the Google Store.
Google bought Fitbit for $2.1 billion USD (roughly $2.84 billion CAD) in early 2021 after vying for the company for a few years while the deal went through a few regulatory hurdles and approvals in the U.S. and the EU. One regulation placed on Google by the EU was that it had to keep both Fitbit and Android’s APIs separate for ten years, and so far, we’re only a little over four years into the deal being finalized. So while Google is making moves to make Fitbit more Google-ish by shutting down its website, I’d expect to see Fitbit Premium and the Fitbit operating system to remain under the Fitbit branding until January 2030.
That said, things could be happening behind the scenes to eliminate this provision in the deal, so I’m just speculating on what was published about the deal a few years ago.
That said, the two brands are tied together closer than ever with new Fitbit users needing to use a Google account to use their devices and old Fitbit users have until 2025 to make the switch. Google has also slowly changed the Fitbit branding to ‘Fitbit by Google’ and now ‘Google Fitbit.’
Google also released its own smartwatch with the Pixel Watch in 2022 and since then, it has dialed back Fitbit so that it has more of a focus on fitness trackers while Google takes the spotlight with its Pixel smartwatch.
Source: Fitbit Store (as of time of publishing, it now redirects to the Google Store) Via: Android Police
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