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The Google Fitbit Deal: Hazardous to competition, privacy, and our health [pdf]
- breck 6y agoSee if anyone was truly concerned they could have put a coalition together and made their own offer for FitBit. FitBit is an incredible company that deserves the Nobel prize for Medicine because they began what will eventually turn into a doctor on everyone's wrist. But doing that is incredibly hard. they had to invent all kinds of hardware, software, data processing pipelines, models, et cetera. And then Apple came in and cleaned their clock. they adapted and somehow pulled off the Versa 2, which was a huge breakthrough, but it was totally David vs. Goliath. If you hate Google, fine, go after Google (here's a hint: abolish #ImaginaryPropertyLaws, the unjust set of laws from which Google derives all its unfair monopoly advantages), but don't sit back and watch while FitBit gets pummeled by monopolists and shorters and then when they reach out for help you attack the one company that came in to save them.
- nr2x 6y agoI’m curious if any future antitrust settlements will require API interoperability. That’s the Apple Watch main advantage, deeper hooks into the ecosystem.
- mattmcknight 6y agoI wonder what it would take to get this idea to actually happen- that the proper response to some antitrust claims is not the incoherent "break them up" argument, but the "open them up" argument that prevents the actual abuses of monopoly that matter in information technology.
- breck 6y agothe answer is to abolish copyrights and patents. that is the only thing we should be talking about. everything else is a log(n) improvement whereas #abolishImaginaryProperty would be n^2 improvement.
- technofiend 6y agoPebble unfortunately also offered a functional, reasonably priced low power device and failed. Fitbit (arguably) has a much larger market but still is part of the problem there's just not that much of a market for small, low power minimal feature devices? It'll be interesting to see how Wyze's Band and Watch sell.
- rusk 6y agoFitbit ate pebble
- breck 6y agothe market for health wearables is 8B. that's people, not dollars. this could be the biggest future market there is. just look at the grin on tcook's face everytime he talks about apple health. we haven't seen this big an opportunity since personal computers. it will make phones look small by comparison. don't just look at what's out there today, look at what all the big dogs are spending money on trying to crack: passive blood sugar monitoring, stress levels, hormone levels, et cetera.
- technofiend 6y agoTim Cook might sell a charger for less than what the Fitbit or Pebble cost, but he won't have any wearables at that price point. I emphasized low cost for a reason: that doesn't include Apple. Yet the Apple watch sells well. So either Pebble & Fitbit missed the mark by selling cheap or they need more features even at that price point.
- nradov 6y agoThere was nothing special about any of the Fitbit products including the Versa 2. They always had multiple competitors with equivalent or better features, not just Apple.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoI'm just a little skeptical about how much value there is in this medical data given all the frameworks there already are in place to limit its use (HIPPA and similar). Theoretically, what specific not already illegal thing could google do with this health data that would be harmful to consumers? Ought we just make those things illegal? From all the evidence I think it's most likely that Google wants fitbit to compete with apple watches and other wearables. To me, it seems like consumers would on net benefit more from deep-pocketed competition with apple in the wearables market.
- kissickas 6y agoData collected on a FitBit (or any other device) is not regulated by HIPAA.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoThank you for pointing that out. If we believe that using such data for ad targeting would be a problem, it remains best to simply make that illegal. Preventing a particular acquisition seems like a roundabout and inefficient way to accomplish the goal, since it would not prevent Google from acquiring the data some other way, supposing they wanted to use it for targeting. And it prevents other potential benefits of an acquisition, such as more robust competition in the wearables market.
- NegativeLatency 6y agoI don’t think that a giant company (google) buying a smaller company is exactly increasing competition.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoDepends on how profitable the small company is by their own lights I guess. If they need capital to continue operations, it has to come from somewhere.
- 6y ago
- gotem 6y agoHaven’t read anything about this yet but based on what I’ve seen I’m not that concerned. It’s like getting mad at (insert food) but then not knowing whether it’s a bad food.
- nr2x 6y agoGoogle makes money selling pharma ads. A lot of money. This can help them make more.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoGoogle doesn't even use Gmail data to target ads. It strains credulity to believe they'd use medical data to do so, even assuming that is legal.
- EForEndeavour 6y ago> Google doesn't even use Gmail data to target ads ...Anymore. They did exactly this from basically launch up to 2017, and they only stopped because it was scaring corporate customers away from buying GSuite. https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/23/15862492/google-gmail-advertising-targeting-privacy-cloud-business https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/23/15862492/google-gmail-adv...
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoYes, although as the article says, gmail was the exception rather than the rule in that most other products did not use customer documents and data to personalize ads. In any case, that was three years ago, and it hardly seems likely that Google will go back to that practice given the increasingly sensitive views of the public toward the use of customer data. It is not my claim that Google would never have used Fitbit data in this way if it had acquired them in the past, only that it seems unlikely that they will on a forward-looking basis.
- wolco2 6y agoThey just stopped in 2017. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/tech...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cmdshiftf4 6y agoWhat I'm sure will be a similar discussion from a couple of days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25520729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25520729
- henearkr 6y agoEnough with that. Googlers are not that stupid, there would be huge internal strikes if the health data was sold to, say, health insurance companies. They are not dumb, their own health data privacy is in stake too, after all. By the past they have proven numerous time that they have a lot the sense of responsibilities -- as employees, as a whole.
- tmpz22 6y agoJust like all the smart well compensated Wall Street employees protected our financial data? Let’s be real we’re being sold out by the rank and file too for the sweet price of a new Tesla and a Tahoe rental.
- henearkr 6y agoGooglers are not Wall Street sharks... not confuse species... Googlers go on strike if a juicy deal is made with China in exchange to some complacency to state-censorship. Or when it's an Defense contract with any country. Wall Street sharks just pop Champaign bottles when these kind of contracts happen, that's the difference.
- rusk 6y agoPeople are people and you can’t account for all of them- it only takes a small minority to make mess
- swiley 6y agoI made the mistake of getting my girlfriend one of these smart watches for Christmas. The companies in California are even telling her when to breath now, it's way creepier than I thought it would be.
- EForEndeavour 6y agoWhich watch, and what's the exact message it's sending about breathing? Is it something like "your O2 sat dropped to 98%, consider some deep breathing," or is it creepy because it's somehow based on her personal activity?
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoThe Apple Watch has a "Breathe" app which by default tells you to spend a minute deep breathing twice a day for relaxation/de-stressing. It times this randomly (often inconveniently) and it isn't really connected to what you're doing beyond, I believe, knowing not to do it during the middle of a workout, and it's very easy to turn off. I'm going to give the OP the benefit of the doubt and assume describing that as "the companies in California are even telling you when to breathe now!" is facetiousness.
- CydeWeys 6y agoIf it's facetious then I don't even see the point of the comment at all. Why get a fitness-tracking watch if you don't want any of those features?? Or just turn them off?
- varispeed 6y agoThat reminds me of this old case https://lizerbramlaw.com/2015/03/19/dont-wait-to-initiate-a-trademark-dispute-fitbug-v-fitbit/ https://lizerbramlaw.com/2015/03/19/dont-wait-to-initiate-a-... a lot of lessons to learn from that.
- bilal4hmed 6y agoWhat hazardous competition ? Apple Watch is the leading smart watch maker by more than a mile. You then have Samsung, Garmin, Oppo etc. with their own OS Fitbit would be so miniscule. sounds like BS to me.
- jariel 6y agoFitBit sells 16M devices, Apple 30M watches. With Google behind fitbit it could easily double.
- bilal4hmed 6y agoBased on this, FitBit is way behind. Its Apple, Huawei and Garmin taking the lead positions https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewwilliams/2020/08/20/apple-watch-grabs-over-half-of-all-smartwatch-revenues-as-sector-grows-by-20/?sh=4522e2267784 https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewwilliams/2020/08/20/apple...
- jariel 6y agoThe category is bigger that smart watches esp. for which 'fitbit' is known. Google is a Giant, Garmin is an ant, in the bank and massive distribution power, brand. Lastly, region/quality matters. A customer in China is not the same as a customer in Africa, as a Customer in Europe etc. in terms of revenue, market power etc..
- jniedrauer 6y agoAt the professional level, there is literally only one brand which can be used to certify world records[0]. Garmin's track mode will eventually be competitive. But more competition would be a good thing. [0] https://the5krunner.com/2020/08/29/joshua-cheptegai-gutted-about-his-strava-gps-track-5000m-world-record/ https://the5krunner.com/2020/08/29/joshua-cheptegai-gutted-a...
- 99_00 6y agoI don't understand that article. Was he running at a official race? What does it matter what his personal device uploads to STRAVA since there are offical time keepers.
- gogoogleg0 6y agoCount me as firmly on Googles side here. The data analytics capabilities are vastly more important to the species than traditional American opinions on commerce. This is not competition for distribution of food and medicine, which should not be privatized, IMO. While STEM would ideally not be privatized, information fragmentation carved up into political boundaries will kill progress the way it works in America. It will devolve into turf wars as we saw in the past; our compiler, no our compiler! This desktop! No this ML model!, to throw out some anecdotes to help color my argument. That’s not progress. Fostering competition is valuable to speculators and lawyers. There’s one physical reality and limited resources for complex machinery. Some level of centralization is key to human survival. It’s really a much simpler matter of political ownership. Let’s be real over survivability of the species for a minute. Not hand me down stories of sound economics.
- jeffbee 6y agoWhat a bunch of malarkey. This paper is a product of the malarkey echo chamber. Just take one key phrase they try to scare you with: “G Suite for Healthcare Businesses", supposedly part of their big scary plan to dominate your life. First of all, not a Google product line, despite the capitalization and quotation marks. There is a marketing site that is meant to tell health businesses that Google Workspace is HIPAA-compliant, but that's it. The only other places where the phrase “G Suite for Healthcare Businesses" appears are thinly-sourced pseudo journalism and blog spam. So we know right there this position paper isn't based on research, it's based on reading blogs. It is echo chamber effluent. The rest of it is just innuendo and second-order suppositions. There exists some company that once used Google Cloud APIs for their own health data, therefore this data -- somehow, through magic -- leaks out into "Google AI", a kind of scary overmind into which one shovels data and out of which comes all manner of scary outcomes. Except it's all bullshit, because there's no mechanism by which third party data that happens to use GCP just osmotically migrates into AdSense. This paper is 7 pages of bullshit.