Google Closes Fitbit Deal, Surviving Regulatory Scrutiny
January 14 2021 - 10:34AM
Dow Jones News
By Dave Sebastian
Google has completed its $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit Inc.
after facing regulatory scrutiny, a deal that would let Google push
more deeply into the wearable-device and health-data
businesses.
The deal's closing came after European Union antitrust officials
last month approved the acquisition with conditions aimed at
protecting users' health data and preserving competition in the
wearable-tech sector, clearing one of the deal's final hurdles. The
Alphabet Inc. company and other U.S.-based tech giants face many
new antitrust cases and investigations into their alleged
anticompetitive practices in both the U.S. and the EU.
"This deal has always been about devices, not data, and we've
been clear since the beginning that we will protect Fitbit users'
privacy," Rick Osterloh, Google's senior vice president for devices
and services, said Thursday.
To appease regulators, Google pledged not to use Fitbit data for
advertising purposes in Europe and to store such data separate from
any other Google data used in ads.
It also told regulators it would allow users to link their
Fitbit data to competing apps and committed to allowing
wearable-device makers open access to functions of Google's Android
operating system.
Google had offered concessions as part of the EU's investigation
into the deal, which the bloc opened in August after rejecting
Google's initial commitments as inadequate.
Founded in 2007, Fitbit makes so-called wearables, or watches
and bracelets that primarily track health information like heart
rate. The Fitbit deal, first agreed to in November 2019, has been
under review by the U.S. Justice Department and Australia's
competition authority. The move intensifies the battle among
technology giants in enticing consumers through devices other than
smartphones.
Write to Dave Sebastian at dave.sebastian@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 14, 2021 10:19 ET (15:19 GMT)
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