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"Google said it wanted to align the Fitbit hardware portfolio to more closely match the Pixel line’s regional availability. " Wow... this must be the most brai

"Google said it wanted to align the Fitbit hardware portfolio to more closely match the Pixel line’s regional availability. " Wow... this must be the most brain damaged thing I've read today. Imagine the google algorithm applied to orchestration. I am running a service that needs a Redis instance per webserver. I have 5 web servers and 3 Redis instances. I run `k8s deploy` or whatever. Google deletes 2 web servers.. see we're all aligned now! There must already be a classic fable or story about this scenario.

ahofmann 3y ago
One has to read between the lines. What they really said is "We sell not enough Fitbit products in these countries and need to cut costs. So we'll sell only in countries, where we sell other products and selling Fitbit products costs us nothing".
golem14 3y ago
You need a sales force, translations, customer billing, regulatory compliance etc - I’m sure the cost of the cloud resources is negligible. I think this is a perfectly rational approach, esp if the long term thought is to bring Fitbit into the android/pixel fold.
- ReactiveJelly 3y ago
  The action makes sense, but the justification just sounds bogus. Like when a company says they're making some change to "improve service" or whatever but it's actually making service worse for some people
- akira2501 3y ago
  It's a penny wise and pound foolish approach that only a monopolist could get away with.
  - jonsolo 3y ago
    Monopolist? Fitbit is far from the market leader, where Apple Watch completely dominates the category.
    - akira2501 3y ago
      I love HN sometimes. No, Google would be the monopolist. The company that purchased a competitor ostensibly just to shut it down and reduce competition. We do actually have laws against this behavior.
minihat 3y ago
My dorm building in college had eight entrances, of which two were handicap accessible. University administration declared that from now on, 100% of doors on campus must be handicap accessible. A week later, six doors were removed from my building...
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  Saving this one to my collection of bureaucracy anecdotes
  - eitally 3y ago
    Try this one on for size: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/06/u-california-berkeley-delete-publicly-available-educational-content https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/06/u-california-...
- Seattle3503 3y ago
  In defense of the school, this forces everyone to confront how bad handicap accessibility is. Before, only a minority of people had to deal with only having two entrances available, so nothing was going to force the issue.
  - pjio 3y ago
    On one side yes, on the other side those two entrances are now more crowded, making it even worse for handicapped people, possibly for the time to come.
  - gameman144 3y ago
    Did anything actually force the issue though? The comment said that they closed the other six doors, but I don't see any implication that people pushed back in any way that improved the new two-door situation.
  - tivert 3y ago
    >> University administration declared that from now on, 100% of doors on campus must be handicap accessible. >> A week later, six doors were removed from my building... > In defense of the school, this forces everyone to confront how bad handicap accessibility is. No, that can't be a defense of the school. The decision-makers could have decided to make improvements so at least some of those six doors became handicap accessible, but they didn't. Instead they decided to take a cheap action that imposed costs on others in order to make an empty statement.

ahofmann 3y ago

One has to read between the lines. What they really said is "We sell not enough Fitbit products in these countries and need to cut costs. So we'll sell only in countries, where we sell other products and selling Fitbit products costs us nothing".

golem14 3y ago

You need a sales force, translations, customer billing, regulatory compliance etc - I’m sure the cost of the cloud resources is negligible. I think this is a perfectly rational approach, esp if the long term thought is to bring Fitbit into the android/pixel fold.

ReactiveJelly 3y ago
The action makes sense, but the justification just sounds bogus. Like when a company says they're making some change to "improve service" or whatever but it's actually making service worse for some people
akira2501 3y ago
It's a penny wise and pound foolish approach that only a monopolist could get away with.
- jonsolo 3y ago
  Monopolist? Fitbit is far from the market leader, where Apple Watch completely dominates the category.
  - akira2501 3y ago
    I love HN sometimes. No, Google would be the monopolist. The company that purchased a competitor ostensibly just to shut it down and reduce competition. We do actually have laws against this behavior.

minihat 3y ago

My dorm building in college had eight entrances, of which two were handicap accessible. University administration declared that from now on, 100% of doors on campus must be handicap accessible. A week later, six doors were removed from my building...

CSMastermind 3y ago
Saving this one to my collection of bureaucracy anecdotes
- eitally 3y ago
  Try this one on for size: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/06/u-california-berkeley-delete-publicly-available-educational-content https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/06/u-california-...
Seattle3503 3y ago
In defense of the school, this forces everyone to confront how bad handicap accessibility is. Before, only a minority of people had to deal with only having two entrances available, so nothing was going to force the issue.
- pjio 3y ago
  On one side yes, on the other side those two entrances are now more crowded, making it even worse for handicapped people, possibly for the time to come.
- gameman144 3y ago
  Did anything actually force the issue though? The comment said that they closed the other six doors, but I don't see any implication that people pushed back in any way that improved the new two-door situation.
- tivert 3y ago
  >> University administration declared that from now on, 100% of doors on campus must be handicap accessible. >> A week later, six doors were removed from my building... > In defense of the school, this forces everyone to confront how bad handicap accessibility is. No, that can't be a defense of the school. The decision-makers could have decided to make improvements so at least some of those six doors became handicap accessible, but they didn't. Instead they decided to take a cheap action that imposed costs on others in order to make an empty statement.