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Google Is Acquiring Fitbit for $2.1 Billion

Google is acquiring Fitbit, a leading wearables brand, for $2.1 billion. Google says the motivation is to expand its and, of course, grab a share of the fast-growing digital health market.

But there鈥檚 more to it.

Just to mention a couple of relevant product families, the acquisition follows a recent . And there鈥檚 already , which includes 鈥渟mart speakers, smart displays, streaming devices, thermostats, smoke detectors, and security systems including smart doorbells, cameras, and smart locks.鈥�

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Our Take

As many analysts have pointed out, the Fitbit acquisition will help Google to further its vision of 鈥渁mbient computing.鈥� By ambient computing, Google means an that will monitor your activities throughout the day (and night) via a multitude of apps, services, and devices. These services include Fossil and Google Nest as mentioned above, plus the good old Google search 鈥� always there in the background, knowing who you are, where you are, what you are doing, and how you are feeling. The AI assistant will help with tasks, requests, reminders, directions, etc. The goal is to make it

And of course, to serve you more ads: highly personalized, geolocation- and context-sensitive. And perhaps attuned to how well you slept last night. Or how you feel right now, based on your emotional state. While this latter conjecture is just that, Fitbit has a built-in heart rate monitor, and heart rate is . Meanwhile, emotion recognition is a . For the most part, emotion recognition is visual: decoding facial expressions, body language, etc. But why not also use a person鈥檚 heart rate, gait, and more?

After all, the goal is 鈥� to help you find exactly what you're looking for. Sometimes that information comes in the form of an ad, which we鈥檒l show along with the search results.鈥�

Oh wait, did you say more ads? But Google claims And it won鈥檛, at least not directly. They do it via Google Adwords. So more data from home telemetry and wearable devices means more data and richer (鈥渂igger鈥�) data for marketers and advertisers to bid on. And more revenue for Google.

In theory, this could result in more relevant ads for consumers, but I suspect that is not going to happen. Not until someone disrupts the current verbatim and rear-view advertising paradigm with something more intelligent. And not until advertisers stop showing me what I鈥檝e already done, seen, read, bought, or 诲颈诲苍鈥檛 buy and instead surprise and delight me by showing something new, unexpected, interesting, and yes, relevant.