#GoogleFitbit

[shuttech]

Google Fitbit & Peloton Unite: A New Fitness Era

Google Fitbit & Peloton Unite: A New Fitness Era" marks the beginning of a transformative collaboration in the fitness industry. Google, leveraging its technology-driven ecosystem, has partnered with Fitbit, a leader in wearable fitness trackers, and Peloton, a pioneer in connected fitness, to create a seamless, integrated fitness experience. This partnership is set to revolutionize how we approach health and wellness by combining Fitbit's health-tracking capabilities with Peloton's immersive workout programs, all powered by Google's advanced AI and data analytics. Together, they're shaping a new era of personalized fitness, where every workout, health metric, and goal is interconnected, smarter, and more accessible than ever before.

https://shuttech.com/technology/google-fitbit-peloton-unite-a-new-fitness-era/

[ajayuikey]

EU’s Google-Fitbit antitrust decision deadline pushed into 2021 – TechCrunch The deadline for Europe to make a call on the Google -Fitbit merger has been pushed out again — with EU regulators now having until January 8, 2021, to take a decision.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Block Google-Fitbit

Google is buying Fitbit and it's likely they'll succeed, despite the fact that this is an obviously bad idea: allowing one of the world's most data-hungry companies to acquire the assets and customers of a rival whose pitch was, "We don't give your sensitive data to Google."

To say nothing of the fact that many Fitbit users were nonconsensually opted into wearing a 24/7 tracking cuff by their employers, who reduced their health coverage and/or charged more for it if employees refused.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/google-fitbit-merger-would-cement-googles-data-empire

So why is this merger likely to sail through competition scrutiny, despite its obvious defects and despite the renewed interest in competition in the tech sector?

Under this standard, mergers are allowed to proceed unless someone can prove that they'll make prices go up immediately.tered competition enforcement.

Under this standard, mergers are allowed to proceed unless someone can prove that they'll make prices go up immediately.

That is, even if you can show that a merger will reduce choice, cost jobs, and cement a dominant player's spot at the top of the pyramid, under "consumer harm," the merger can proceed.

This has led to ever-more-absurd and toxic marketplaces, with scholars desperately trying to fit the obvious problems with monopolistic mergers and acquisitions into a consumer harm framework.

A very good example of this weird genre is Vox EU's "Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumers" which takes 6,000 words to state the obvious: it's a bad idea to let dominant companies buy their smaller competitors.

https://voxeu.org/article/googlefitbit-will-monetise-health-data-and-harm-consumers

The reason it takes so much verbiage to accomplish this is that the authors have to fit all the obvious harms of Google buying the company you've been tracking your sex-life, alcohol consumption and menstrual cycles into a "consumer harm" framework.

It's pretty convincing, but mostly because they make the case that the groteque marketplace distortions - the anti-competitive effects of this merger - will, at the margins, also make some prices go up.

The most convincing part of the paper, then, isn't the argument for consumer harms per se, but rather the stark demonstration that there's lots of bad stuff that doesn't fit in the frame.

[hackernewsrobot]

Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumers

https://voxeu.org/article/googlefitbit-will-monetise-health-data-and-harm-consumers Comments

[techbugs-digital-marketing]

Google’s $2.1 Billion Fitbit Deal to Face longer EU investigation

People familiar with the matter said Thursday that Google's offer of $ 2.1 billion (around Rs. 15,724 crores) for fitness tracker Fitbit will face a thorough European Union antitrust investigation next week. This month, Google Alphabetics Unit offered not to use Fitbit Health data to help target ads in an attempt to address the European Union's antitrust concerns. Opening a thorough investigation indicates that this is not enough. The deal, announced last November, will see Google compete with market leader Apple and Samsung in the smartwatch and physical activity tracking market, along with other companies, including Huawei and Xiaomi. One said the European Commission, which will begin the investigation after the preliminary review ends on August 4, is expected to benefit from the four-month investigation to further explore the use of data in healthcare. The commission declined to comment. Google repeated previous comments, saying the deal was device-related, not data-related. "The portable space is crowded and we believe that the combination of Google and Fitbit's hardware efforts will increase competition in this segment, which will benefit consumers and make the next generation of devices better and more affordable," said one spokesman. Read the full article

[generoussheepblaze]

Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumers 80 by hhs | 30 comments on Hacker News.

[worldupdate]

Google-Fitbit takeover: EU expands launches full-scale probe #expands #fullscale #googlefitbit #launches #probe #takeover https://world-update.com/google-fitbit-takeover-eu-expands-launches-full-scale-probe/?feed_id=27979&_unique_id=5f2961900c2ac