2 weeks Ago By Matt Jancer
Voice assistants are, on the one hand, one of the most annoying aspects of technology in my day-to-day life, alongside home internet’s inability to just work without interruption for longer than a week and whatever idiot algorithm out there is deciding that my last name merits repeatedly changing all my junk mail and advertisements to Spanish.On the other hand, they work well enough most of the time, and losing a feature, especially a free one that’s been available for a long time, is always a bitter pill to swallow. Reddit users have been reporting seeing a message on their Fitbits stating, “Google Assistant on Fitbit watches is being turned down.
This feature will stop working in the coming weeks.”(opens in a new window)FitbitSense 2(opens in a new window)Available at WalmartBuy Now(opens in a new window)Available at AmazonBuy Now(opens in a new window)coming apart, piece by pieceHot on the heels of bad news dressed up as good news, which signaled that Google plans to shut down and merge everybody’s Fitbit accounts to Google accounts by February 2, 2026, comes this latest development.Google is something like a black hole for tech.
Instead of roaming the galaxy looking for stars, space dust, and planets to gobble up, it sets its sights a bit lower on Silicon Valley. It merely swallows whole companies, buying them and then more often than not crushing them into oblivion due to its sheer mass.It was only back in January 2021 that Google completed its acquisition of Fitbit, and at the time, it didn’t raise many eyebrows.
Fitbit had an established range of successful smartwatches and wearable fitness trackers, and Google hadn’t yet released its own.That would come the next year with the release of the Pixel Watch in October 2022. From there, things have gone downhill for the formerly independent brand.
Never mind that Google, which also owns the smartwatch brand Pebble, brought that one back earlier this year. Google apparently feels Pebble’s focus on the basics differentiates it enough from Google’s do-it-all Pixel Watch not to be a threat to the latter.If, for whatever reason, you’re itching to get a Fitbit before the end times for the brand come, you’d better buy one soon.
Google hasn’t come right out and said it, but all the evidence seems to be pointing toward there being an expiration for this plucky brand of fitness trackers, which, due to their simplicity and focus on health tracking, have a blessed simplicity missing from the Pixel Watch.(opens in a new window)FitbitVersa 4(opens in a new window)Available at AmazonBuy Now(opens in a new window)Available at WalmartBuy Now(opens in a new window)The post Fitbits Are Losing Google Assistant as Smartwatch Brand Circles the Drain appeared first on VICE..
