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Google Buys Fitbit: What Does it Mean for its Competitors, and the Wearable Health Ecosystem?

Google is now a big player in the wearable tech and health tracking.

Those in the IoT space have been watching the evolution of wearable tech from clothing and hearables to variations in connected glasses and more. In the consumer space, wrist-based wearables have been the most persistent — Apple owns 48 percent of the market share, followed by Samsung and Fitbit jostling for second and third space. Sales of the Apple smartwatch increased in the third quarter of 2019 to 6.8 million copies sold — an increase of 51 percent compared to the previous year.

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Google recently acquired one of the pioneers in the wearables market, Fitbit, for $2.1 billion. This raises issues numerous issues regarding personal data, anti-competition, and the state of wearable health startups.

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Will We Company Take Over Our Smart Cities?

In the earlier days of wearable tech, I remember there were great amounts of media interest around the idea that people wearing a Fitbit or Pebblewatch at work could be subject to undue surveillance by their employers. Today, there are many employee health programs that their employer-funded health insurance tracks fitness metrics such as blood pressure and the number of daily steps in exchange for bonus points, Pebblewatch is no more, and the apps we willingly upload onto our phones are offering more data on our daily lives than ever before. But if you own a smartphone and happen to work in a smart building where everything from lighting, utility usage, meeting room occupation, and people movement is tracked, things get a bit more interesting. 

WeWork Knows All About Its Inhabitants

Enter WeWork/We Company (aka We for the purposes of this article.) As of early-January 2019, WeWork had a valuation of roughly US$47 billion and managed 10,000,000 square feet of office space. They have over 425 coworking spaces in over 100 countries. They also own a series of children's schools called wegrow and welive for digital nomads and traveling executives. Last year, they acquired Meetup and Teem. Then, in February of this year, they acquired spatial analytics company Euclid. In announcing the acquisition, WeWork asserted: