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Comment by brlewis | Hacker News Reader

> I am super happy with my Fitbit but given Google I assume it will be "sunset" within a year or two

I work for Fitbit. I don't speak for Fitbit, but now that the deal is closed I can share my own opinions and ask my own questions.

What makes you think Google wants Apple to have the only good smart watch? That would be the main effect of sunsetting Fitbit.

Nest still exists after their 2014 acquisition by Google, and Nest is not as important to any other part of Google as Fitbit is to Android. Why would they be more inclined to sunset Fitbit?

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Google has a perception problem. Even if I can't logically defend how I feel about their likelihood of killing a product, it doesn't mean that image hasn't been built up over time by their actions. That's branding.

That aside, if they end up tying Fitbit accounts to Google accounts, the whole jig is up anyway, because no-one wants to buy a hardware product whose operation depends upon not having Google shut your account down with no recourse other than to raise a stink on sites like HN.

They have a very clear history of buying companies, carving out what they need from it and reselling it (Boston Dynamics, Motorola, HTC, etc).

Chances are that Fitbit won't be around 2-3 years from now, hence no real reason to invest in a product from them now.

Like everyone who has an account on HN, I'm aware that there are companies acquired by Google that no longer exist. But some -- Android, youtube, Nest, etc. -- still exist. What makes you think Fitbit will fall in the former category? Random probability?

I don't know, I used to resist people's comments about Google shutting everything down, but I find myself on that side of the fence more often these days. With that said, I would be surprised if Google shut Fitbit down. Wearables seem to be big business when done right, and Fitbit is the best thing outside of Apple watches (not counting Garmin, they are in an upper tier imo). I think it's in Google's best interest to properly integrate Fitbit into their company and help it grow.

Usually the hardware companies they kill off eventually, Nest being the outlier.

I'm not saying that they'll 100% kill off Fitbit, but it's very likely. Google already does hardware and software that does a lot of the same stuff, no point in having 2 brands.

As I understand it, the bits they carved out of HTC and motorola are what became Pixel. It's not like they stopped producing phones.

> What makes you think Google wants Apple to have the only good smart watch?

Wear OS shows how little Google care about good smart watches. It's six years old and still bad, if they wanted it to be good they would've fixed it years ago.

FTR making a good smart watch is a hard problem. Acquiring a company that's already put in the hard work is more resource efficient than scaling that mountain yourself.

> That would be the main effect of sunsetting Fitbit.

That's very debatable, considering the smartwatches from Samsung, Fossil, Garmin...

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