Amid concerns on how the health related data of the masses will be handled by it, Google has now completed its acquisition of wearable device maker Fitbit Inc.
Despite the completion of the deal, it is still being probed by the U.S. and Australian competition regulators.
Reuters
The Alphabet Inc company confirmed the $2.1 billion acquisition on Thursday. With the takeover, Google is expected to retain Fitbit’s 1,800 employees.
The deal raised concerns when it was first announced in 2019, simply due to the amount of data that Google stood to gain from the takeover. The search engine giant already has a considerable amount of data collected from its various services.
Fitbit through its fitness trackers and other health monitoring devices, is able to record the users’ steps, calories burned, heart rate, and even sleep patterns. Fitbit’s acquisition would hence mean that Google gets its hands on such public health data too.
(Representative Image: Reuters)
Google thus had to win the antitrust approval from several authorities before the acquisition could take place. It did so from the European Union in December after Google agreed to specific restrictions on the ways to use customers’ health data.
“This deal has always been about devices, not data, and we’ve been clear since the beginning that we will protect Fitbit users’ privacy,” Google assured in a blog post on Thursday.
The company will thus meet concerns of data privacy by not using the data for targeted advertising, meaning no sharing of the health data with third parties. It will, however, propel itself to the forefront of the wearables market with the already associated user base with Fitbit.
(With inputs from Reuters)