I wouldn’t wear a Fitbit regularly anymore now that Google has purchased them. And I certainly wouldn’t have an account tied to it recording my data:
When Mike Carpenter learned Google’s latest acquisition would be Fitbit, the maker of a device he wore at all hours of the day except in the shower, he left his Fitbit Charge 3 on the table at his office where he was working that day. He, and others like him, haven’t picked it up since.
On Nov. 1, Google said would be buying Fitbit for $2.1 billion in hopes of boosting its hardware business getting a foothold in the health space. Google explicitly said in the announcing the deal that it won’t sell users’ personal or health data. Despite that assurance, some Fitbit users say they don’t trust the company, and are shedding the product altogether.
“I’m not only afraid of what they can do with the data currently, but what they can do with it once their AI advances in 10 or 20 years,” Carpenter told CNBC, saying he didn’t believe the company’s privacy assurances. “Health insurance companies would love to get their hands on that data and their purposes wouldn’t be advertising so is that what they are going to do with it? They didn’t spend the money to not utilize it in some way.”
The trend of people throwing or threatening to throw out their Fitbit devices comes as Google faces a perception problem that has spanned everyday users and regulators alike. The company has paid data privacy fines in the EU and made recent strides into the stringently regulated healthcare industry, which has caused the public to re-think seemingly harmless tools.
“I only recently got it and now I’m thinking I don’t need Google watching literally my every step or my every heartbeat,” said Dan Kleinman, who said he is getting rid of his Fitbit Versa.
Any benefit of knowing that information is significantly outweighed by the disadvantage of Google also having it