Google completes its $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit

Google has announced that it has completed its acquisition of Fitbit, over a year after the deal was first revealed.

The tech giant published a blog post outlining that this deal has always been about devices, not data and that it will protect Fitbit users’ privacy.

“We worked with global regulators on an approach which safeguards consumers’ privacy expectations, including a series of binding commitments that confirm Fitbit users’ health and wellness data won’t be used for Google ads and this data will be separated from other Google ads data,” Google notes.

Further, Google says that it will continue to allow Fitbit users to choose to connect to third-party services so they’ll still be able to sync their preferred health and fitness apps to their accounts.

“We’ll also continue to work with regulators around the world so that they can be assured that we are living up to these commitments,” the tech giant writes.

Following the announcement, Fitbit CEO James Park released a statement saying that the company’s products will continue to work on both iOS and Android.

He also outlined that the acquisition will allow Fitbit to “innovate faster, provide more choices, and make even better products.” Park went on to say that the company “will maintain strong data privacy and security protections.

The $2.1 billion USD (about $2.6 billion CAD) acquisition was first announced in November 2019. Today’s news follows the EU’s approval of the deal last year after Google made promises about its use of health data.

Source: Google