to everybody worrying about "the data", what do you actually believe google could possibly learn about you through your fitness data?
as far as i can tell, the most valuable piece of data they could harvest through a fitbit acquisition is whether or not you're the type of person who uses a fitness tracker (and they already know whether or not you installed the fitbit app through the play store). It seems insane to me that they would pay 2.1B to feed your heart rate or step count into their ad-targeting algorithms - it's just not that valuable.
It's incredibly valuable. If I were google, I'd harvest the crap out of the data to make ad-serving pinpointing even more granular than it is now. Not only can they use the data to immediately make their ad selection algo more accurate, but I'd imagine lumping all this new data alongside existing user-profile datasets will reveal new purchasing trends (and therefore advertisement campaign trends) at an exponential rate. They are essentially an ad sales company after all so that behavior shouldn't be unexpected.
I also wouldn't really be surprised if they added hardware code that logs exactly when and where a given fitbit device is within bluetooth range of another fitbit device (or any google device for that matter). Then create a (or improve upon their already existing) network map via triangulation to see where each user goes, how long they interact with specific people, which supermarket isle they walked down when they happened to walk past another fitbit wearer that is known to be part of xyz demographic, etc.
Maybe they won't do this...But, consider how big A/B testing is nowadays. Imagine if you could A/B test, but not just see which maximizes engagement, but also see which causes more fear, excitement, etc.
Who knows if that can be monetized, but it seems that there are actually some ways heart beat can be used for other products.
The data is deep but not wide. I don't think Fitbit data has much value alone, or even joined to some broader user profile.
I see more value in using the FitBit customer base as a market for other wearables. FitBit has developed some trust regarding collecting health data, which is hard.
If I were to guess: got $100bn cash, not many obvious opportunities to spend on, why not add a device to portfolio? OS + device seems to be Google corporate strategy.
Fitbit has disastrous financials. It's been losing money for four straight quarters and they are losing grip on the market. If this was viewed as non-tech company they would have gone to Chapter 11 already. Tech bubble is real.
That data potentially tells them about the health habits of people. How much of the users work out everyday, go for jogs, or bicycle rides, all these numbers can tell help them target specific health products to these people.
This health data is a gold mine for medical and pharma industry as well.
Could you please stop creating accounts to break HN's guidelines with? It's in your interests to do so, because we're trying to have a community that stays interesting for everybody. Going down in flames gets boring pretty quickly.
as far as i can tell, the most valuable piece of data they could harvest through a fitbit acquisition is whether or not you're the type of person who uses a fitness tracker (and they already know whether or not you installed the fitbit app through the play store). It seems insane to me that they would pay 2.1B to feed your heart rate or step count into their ad-targeting algorithms - it's just not that valuable.