Users of the Fitbit smartwatch will be required to have Google accounts next year to access some of the device’s features, following the fitness tracking company’s acquisition by Google-parent Alphabet Inc. last year.
Fitbit, which is now “Fitbit by Google,” announced that an account with the internet giant would be required to use some of the app’s features at some point in 2023.
Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome, speaks at Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O, in San Francisco on 28 June 2012 ( KIMIHIRO HOSHINO/AFP/GettyImages )
While the company promised to support native Fitbit accounts until “at least early 2025,” it acknowledged that at some point, accounts will be required to use the company’s devices.
Via Fitbit:
If you have a Fitbit account, after the launch of Google accounts on Fitbit, you’ll have the option to move Fitbit to your Google account or to continue to use your existing Fitbit devices and services with your Fitbit account for as long as it’s supported. Support of Fitbit accounts will continue until at least early 2025. After support of Fitbit accounts ends, a Google account will be required to use Fitbit.
It is already potentially to sync data from Fitbit to Google accounts, although Fitbit said it was still possible to keep that data siloed in the Fitbit ecosystem. Presumably, that will end once Google logins are mandated.
Via Fitbit:
Currently, all customers log in to Fitbit with a Fitbit account, and so your Fitbit data syncs to your Fitbit account, not to a Google account. However, you may still choose to transfer some Fitbit data to Google in limited cases, like if you use Fitbit with a Google service. For example, you may authorize Google Assistant to provide your Fitbit activity, like your step count and calories burned.
The fitness company was acquired by Alphabet in 2021 for approximately $2.1 billion. At the time Fitbit pledged that user data from Fitbit devices would not be used for Google ads.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.