Google pulls Fitbit from almost 30 markets | Hacker News Reader

Google pulls Fitbit from almost 30 markets

mobilesyrup.com

72 pointsmyth_drannon93 comments

"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.

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".

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.

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

It's a penny wise and pound foolish approach that only a monopolist could get away with.

Monopolist? Fitbit is far from the market leader, where Apple Watch completely dominates the category.

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.

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...

Saving this one to my collection of bureaucracy anecdotes

Try this one on for size: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/06/u-california-...

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.

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.

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.

>> 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.

> My dorm building in college had eight entrances, of which two were handicap accessible.

Around 13% of Americans have disabilities according to Google. 25% of the doors at this school were handicap accessible. I don't get "how bad handicap accessibility is" from this example.

Closing 6 doors to comply with a policy of course is completely stupid.

Handicap accessibility in the U.S. is the best in the world.

My employer recently implemented "all gender bathrooms." All that meant was a couple new signs and disabling and taping off all the urinals. So now 75% of the toilets are permanently out of service and there's more pee on the seats.

Yep and then eventually you get WOMEN ONLY sections of the room any ways

wait, what?

There's rules vs conventions

They women use get to use both, W, Male Female and Male Men have to make do with the ones delegated Male and Male Female.

I have seen this in airports, nightclubs, office buildings.

Every so often Apple does something I don't like, or else I take a look at current iPhone prices, and I toy with the idea of switching to a Pixel for my next phone.

But inevitably, within a week or two, Google will do something that makes me uncomfortable relying on them for any piece of hardware that I'm likely to keep for 3+ years.

I've decided that I won't pay Google any more money. But I do like their phones... So I'll be buying used. :)

There are more options than those two. Pebble watches were built open enough to allow Rebble to get developed and let Pebble watches be used to this day, despite being officially unsupported. A lot of mainstream Android phones support LineageOS. A lot of older iPhones with older iOS versions can be jailbroken and used to this day with tweaks.

> Pebble watches were built

Were, past tense, being the operative word. If I don't already have one, the ability to put an alternative OS on a pebble watch, while cool, isn't particularly useful.

I guess there's the android watch thing?

Honestly, the Pixel line has always been meh (in my opinion, of course). They built a ton of respect on the Nexus line, which genuinely was a decent set of phones; now they've squandered it on a bunch of overpriced and underspeced options.

Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, OnePlus, etc all make great phones. You don't have to get a Google.

Unfortunately there are few options if you want a more “vanilla style” Android experience like the Pixel has, without significant OS customizations or pushing of me-too ecosystem apps/features. To my knowledge it’s mainly just Fairphone if you’re ok with not getting flagship specs and Sony if you’re ok with paying a bit more (but getting excellent camera controls in exchange).

Isn't the fairphone incredibly expensive for it's specs? Like more than an actually decent phone instead of one with specs 5+ years out of date?

At this point it's best to use an alternative OS. I've been running CalyxOS on my Fairphone and has been super happy about it.

Google has truly tarnished their brand for some people. I don’t trust them at this point and am moving off their services periodically. Several products I’ve used, Google created or Google bought, were shut down unexpectedly and now I expect anything they touch to burn.

"for some people"

It is wild to think that there are still people loyal to Google. Just use their primary product - search - and tell me how anyone can not froth at the mouth in anger over the complete and total capitulation to the ad team? Seriously, fuck these guys and if you work for them, you're part of the problem.

There's really no good reason to use Google for anything where there's competition. I use Google for Youtube (no competition), Search and Maps (not very competitive offers by MSFT and AAPL yet getting better every day while Google is getting worse). Have switched from Gmail to Hosted Exchange a decade ago and using iCloud for files, pictures and calendar/notes etc synching. Safari and Firefox for ad-less browsing.

I tried using Azure for hosting my email, it was an absolute trainwreck.

They couldn't even do a mailing list, so that I could have a single email address for the kids school, etc, that emails both myself and my wife. The best they could offer was a shared mailbox, but it wouldn't go into my wife's inbox so not much point in that.

Fastmail did a better job than that.

If you want to get into Android, a safer bet for high-end devices would be Samsung. It helps if you have other Samsung devices, like TVs or Galaxy Watch.

I have an S21 Ultra (2021). It's big and somewhat heavy, but it has 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB of storage, a good camera, it will get 4-5 years of updates in total, and it's easily the best Android I had thus far.

My last Google device was Nexus 6 and it was shit. The first device I got had screen issues. Changed it in warranty, and the replacement died just after the warranty was over. Pixels are not as appalling as Nexuses were back then, but from reviews on the web, it's not far either. Also, the default Google experience is shit too.

Yeah, except for Samsung being really interested in bloatware and not immune from the lure of surveillance economy cash (which is their right, whether I like it or not!).

Weirdly enough I'd rather have close-to-stock rather than have essentially both Google and Samsung trying to monetize me.

I run an Apple phone at this point, and I'm not going to lie, they're so far ahead in this respect (good if not overpriced hardware, build quality, coherent ecosystems, less reliance surveillance capitalism, interop between devices), that it is just really hard to consider Android.

As much as I like the customization possibilities, more F/OSS-aligned OS & apps, etc of the Android ecosystem... It's hard to recommend it over Apple today.

Not sure what you mean by bloatware, but I prefer several Samsung apps over the Google ones. I prefer the Calendar app, for example because it allows me to draw on it with the pen. I also prefer Samsung's Calculator, Notes, Clock, and Health apps. I'd even prefer Samsung's Browser, which even has ads blocking, but I'm using Firefox.

The preference for the pristine Google experience is absolutely weird, because Google is not Apple, indeed.

On my phone, using Firefox with uBlock Origin, I go into ThePirateBay, download entire shows on my phone, then using VLC I stream them to my TV straight from my phone. There's nothing in Apple's offering that beats that for me. Mostly because Apple hates general purpose computing.

> Not sure what you mean by bloatware, but I prefer several Samsung apps over the Google ones. I prefer the Calendar app, for example because it allows me to draw on it with the pen. I also prefer Samsung's Calculator, Notes, Clock, and Health apps. I'd even prefer Samsung's Browser, which even has ads blocking, but I'm using Firefox.

Yeah it might be a bit silly of me, but I basically consider all of Samsung's apps bloatware. Maybe that's an extreme position, but they almost never have the polish of the apple ecosystem, and when I'm on Android I'd rather use something like k9 over Samsung Email (so I wouldn't want it pre-installed, or would want to immediately remove it).

On Android it seems like finding the "best" version of all the apps is the price of choosing the bazaar over the cathedral.

Also, sometimes Samsung/other Android providers get weird about letting you uninstall their apps or daemons they might be running, etc. I have zero tolerance for any of that, on a platform that's supposed to be more configurable and somewhat under my own control. So it tends to be easier to just tend to a close-to-stock provider (and then eventually putting on a custom ROM or whatever if I get antsy).

On Apple, for better or worse there just is no choice... And the walled garden is just comfy enough.

> On my phone, using Firefox with uBlock Origin, I go into ThePirateBay, download entire shows on my phone, then using VLC I stream them to my TV straight from my phone. There's nothing in Apple's offering that beats that for me. Mostly because Apple hates general purpose computing.

uBlock Origin on mobile is definitely a great point -- the one big issue with Firefox on iOS, but I expect it will be solved eventually for iOS (there are always rumors but nothing concrete yet)...

VLC also is on iOS BTW I use it and it's great/my default.

And yeah I definitely sympathize with the dislike of Apple's hate of general purpose computing and user control. But I have to admit when what they've built is better/more cohesive and it just is for now.

Totally agree. I enjoyed owning my S9+ and even though I was someone who used to root and ROM my older Android phones, I didn't really have any complaints about the Samsung "bloat" some people love to complain about. Even though I have a Pixel device now, I still use Samsung's browser as it is far superior to Chrome or even Firefox imo (I am a diehard FF user on desktop) and I even had to install a 3rd party app to replicate Samsung's "panels" application for a swipeable side app drawer which I loved and found extremely useful on my S9+.

Switching from an iPad pro to a tab s9 ultra to go with the Samsung watch and s23 ultra finally made things smooth for me.

I understand how people in the apple ecosystem must feel about compatibility, it's actually really nice.

I do hate duplicate apps from Samsung but like you the last appealing google device for me was the nexus 5.

Have you looked at Samsung's privacy policy? Wow. Not just no, but hell no.

There's nothing in Samsung's privacy policy that companies like Google, or Microsoft didn't already do.

I'm also an EU citizen, and the GDPR and ePrivacy Directive, i.e., the law, is above any terms of service, as Facebook recently found out.

> it will get 4-5 years of updates in total

Are you sure? Historically that's not been the case. I have an S6Edge which I got in 2016 and Samsung provided less than 18 months worth of Android updates, so it's stuck back on Android 7.0. I have several other Samsung device which I've rooted/jailbroken and have versions of Lineage that are way more up to date than anything Samsung have ever provided, I've got a couple of S4s running Android 12. (I'd do that with the S6Edge as well, except I have a GearVR which the Edge fits into, and most off the neat tricks the GearVR uses won't work if I lose the original Samsung-supplied OS).

I have an iPhone 6S which can't update to the most recent iOS versions, but is still getting security updates from Apple.

Yes, I am sure, this is a somewhat more recent pledge from Samsung.

I would disagree: I don't buy Samsung devices due to locked bootloaders in North America. Pixels will have graphene/calyx/lineage/whatever years after they go EOL.

This would be a very legitimate concern.

Not sure what the difference between regions is, I'm in Europe, but on my S21U I have the option to unlock the bootloader in “Developer options”.

New Pixels receive software updates for five years, and you can buy all the original parts from iFixit.

Combine that with GrapheneOS and it's a pretty good long-term solution.

I've used Android phones since I bought the original Motorola Droid the day it came out.

This year was the first time I seriously considered switching to an iPhone as I watch their hardware keep progressing while Android manufacturers just copy design and slip in terms of specs.

Things like the Lidar sensor show that at least Apple is pushing their devices to do more. Yeah I hate that they eliminated the headphone jack, etc. but Android devices just copy those decisions anyway so they're really starting to feel less like a competitor and more like wannabe iPhones.

Sony still makes top-end phones with headphone jacks, SD card slots, and a camera that doesn't mangle your photos unless you ask it to. The Xperia line is pretty much the perfect phone for the HN crowd.

Those phones don't have the hardware security features found on Pixels.

What features are those and would HN types even want them?

> would HN types even want them?

I bought a Pixel just for GrapheneOS. Can't speak for anyone else.

> What features are those

There's a rather exhaustive list here:

https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

Some that stand out to me:

> Hardware memory tagging

> Isolated radios (cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.), GPU, SSD, media encode / decode, image processor and other components

> Weaver disk encryption key derivation throttling provided by secure element

> Hardware memory tagging

Sounds like that's a feature in any ARMv9 processor, which would include current Xperias?

What you've linked is a long list but a lot of the items in it are underspecified and hard to search for. Would be good to be able to know what all these features actually do and why they do or don't exist in other models.

Google claims the Pixel 8 is the first handset with that feature.

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2023/11/first-handset...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38125379

Oh very cool, I wish I knew about them when I got my current phone (Galaxy S23 Ultra). I would have been much happier, will definitely keep them in mind next time I'm in the market for a new phone.

I also have the same phone because the Sony flagship would be more expensive. It might be worth it for the added features though.

The headphone jack is not a big issue; a good enough USB to 3.5mm DAC is $20 or so.

So you can't charge your phone and listen to audio at the same time. That sentence would sound crazy 10 years ago.

I can't speak to the quality of them, as I'm still on a phone with a headphone jack, but there are plenty of Usb C DACs that split the usb c for charging too.

My xz2c works fine with a cheap splitter. They break once a year or so. The latest one works with PD which is nice.

But. A few years later the usb port is almost unusable.

Also note that, at least for this old phone, Sony updates stopped two years from when the phone was released which is pretty bad, especially as I bought it a year after it was released.

I haven't plugged a pair of wired headphones OR a charging cable into my phone in 3 to 5 years now. Wireless charging has been a thing for ages, and is standard on any non-budget phone.

I understand that some people are still upset about headphone jacks. When Apple first pushed that direction, people convinced me to be upset too. But then I broke down, and went on Amazon and realized that quality Bluetooth headphones are plentiful and cheap and only need charging once or twice a month. After trying a pair, I felt silly for waiting so long.

So I'm sure there is SOME audience of people with $500+ Sennheiser headphones, trying to somehow produce an audiophile experience on a cell phone. But the reality is that 99% of normal consumers are better off going wireless and getting the improved water resistance if not better use of space.

Bluetooth is a running joke around our house. When I'm talking on the phone and my girlfriend gets in the car and suddenly my phone call gets teleported to the car that I'm not in. When we go to watch a movie and the sound decides to come out of the projector instead of the speaker system. When I want to listen to a podcast outside and it start coming out of the speaks in the basement. Just give me a wire.

It's not just the inferior hardware either. Google has basically wiped out all the freedom we used to enjoy in Android. Nowadays, if you dare to customize anything, your phone fails hardware attestation because you "tampered" with it. And then the bank apps refuse to work.

I still have two reasons not to switch: Termux and GrapheneOS. Who knows what Google's gonna "sunset" next though? There's already hints that the Linux system calls Termux depends on will be locked away by security policies. If that happens I'm gone.

Don't you have the same problem on iPhone but worse? Since they've never allowed any of this?

Allowing this stuff is exactly what makes Android compelling. If they stop allowing it, there's no reason to tolerate its inferiority. There's just no point if Google turns Android into a walled garden. If I must be in a walled garden, I'm choosing the better kept one.

Ironically Google made the easiest phone to de-Google. The truth is GrapheneOS is the only reason the Pixel matters at all. If anything it makes me angry at the other manufacturers for not providing the security features and firmware updates GrapheneOS needs.

This seems like a weird rationale for that decision.

Are you in one of those countries affected by this move?

I note in the original post by Google (two links away from 'mobilesyrup', who don't deign to mention the actual countries) they write:

"We are no longer selling Fitbit products in select countries—but don’t worry! We will continue to support you and the devices you currently own with software releases, security updates, warranty fulfillment, and access to customer service."

So if you had bought a fitbit, and were in one of the countries they were not selling in any longer, you'd still be fine, presumably for at least 3+ years.

> Google confirmed last month that Fitbit would be leaving over a dozen markets in Asia and Europe. In Asia, these markets are Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. As for Europe, Fitbit is leaving Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Slovakia.

Just so you don’t have to dig into the article where you can’t find it.

I see, so leaving from lower GDP countries

According to Wikipedia [1][2] you are right - for the total GDP.

However, interestingly, Luxembourg is the highest GDP "per capita" in the world [3] :)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

Good that my postgraduate degree in international economics is worthwhile for some analyses. :)

They're doing people a favor. Fitbit is trash: the second Fitbit Charge we've owned in the last 3yrs has died, this time a Charge 5 that refused to turn on overnight 13 months after purchase -- 1 month after the warranty expired. We got a refund on it through our credit card's Extended Warranty protection benefit & bought a Garmin Venu Sq 2 to replace it.

It's been a rough couple years as a Fitbit user; ever since the acquisition, Google's been slowly but surely shuttering the service piece by piece, and pretty much everyone can see that Google's only interested in pushing their own devices.

What a waste.

> pretty much everyone can see that Google's only interested in pushing their own devices.

Then why are Fitbit adds appearing on YouTube every few minutes?

Because you forgot to sign up for YouTube Premium. With YouTube premium you can watch unlimited ad-free videos. Eligible new members get a 1 month free trial, then pay only $13.99/month. Act now and save 15% with an annual membership.

Thanks, Google Sales!

I’ve always liked FitBit devices, the App and the Brand.

Now if they had only integrated Fitbit with Apple Health I might wearing a FitBit right now instead of an Apple Watch.

Same experience with their Nest acquisition. Google bought a good product just to slowly kill it off.

Never forget that pre Google+ they has #1 Social Media app in India and Brazil and killed it because its not popular enough (Orkut).

This is unfortunate, but expected. I used a Fitbit Charge for the past seven-plus years. I built an app, SyncFit, to sync to Apple Health. I switched to Apple Watch last year because it was clear Google had removed features in the latest Fitbit devices to sell more Android Watch devices.

Why can’t Google sell hardware in more than a handful of countries? Samsung and Apple reach almost 200.

They're not really trying. 4% of a small market simply isn't worth the overhead.

Samsung and apple make most of their money from selling hardware. Google makes most of its money from selling advertising. In fact, google makes more money from youtube ads than from all its hardware combined. That changes the motivation of how hard each company is willing to try to sell you hardware. Ironically google should really be trying harder because they need to diversify from the ads game.

Tried to use the Fitbit inspire 3 on my iPhone, but it kept losing the bluetooth connection after a few hours and notifications would not go through. Still, the bluetooth connection indicator would be active. I ended up returning it and switched back to my trusty GTS Mini 2, which worked flawlessly (and probably sent all my data to China).

I just set up the Pixel Watch 2 that came with a discount when buying a Pixel 8 and Google pushed me to reactivate my 12 year dormant fitbit account and migrate it, so of course it's due to ride off into the sunset.

Planning to gift my wife a FitBit and now Google pulled it off in my country. Can anyone recommend an alternative?

Garmin

Garmin is what we went with. They have a _ton_ of options to choose from ( https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/wearables-smartwatches/ ).

My wife opted for the 40mm Garmin Venu Sq 2 ( https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/801643/pn/010-02701-00 ), which is one of their smallest watches. More expensive, to be sure, but the battery life is way better, the software is good (instead of sucking like the Fitbit app), & I know of at least five (5) people who say their Garmin has lasted for _years_, which isn't something I can say for either of the Fitbits we owned.

The one knock against Garmin is that their pricing for watch bands is INSANE. Do not under any circumstances pay the money for the bands they're asking for; there are plenty of better, cheaper third-party options available on Amazon, Etsy, & other sites.

And to save you the trouble: the smallest watch that Garmin makes is the 34mm Lily ( https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/698519/pn/010-02384-03 ). The main reason my wife opted NOT to buy the Lily was that the "stylish" patterned lens -- the background -- is distracting & non-customizable.

That’s some disorganized bs

That's quite a destructive action by Google.

How? I'm genuinely asking that. Not like they're going into people's homes and stealing them.

If you viewed the whole action, like I did, it's clear. I bought a FitBit, took it with me to Latin America (with pics to prove it), and then Google went along and bought FitBit and now they're discontinuing it from Latin American countries.

Edit: it wasn't launched in Argentina when I went there in 2019 (with a stop in Uruguay), but it was launched there before Google bought it https://blog.google/products/fitbit/fitbit-launches-argentin... The press release got moved from fitbit's website to Google apparently.

Edit 2: At least 1 of their product names, Alta HR, must have been inspired by Latin America

Ok, but how has that caused you harm? You already bought it and can continue to use it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com