[SurgeArrest]

RIP FitBit. Google bought you, which means that a good lineup of products will be killed or infected with buggy, slow, limited and unimaginative software from Google. Prepare to reboot your Fitbits daily. Maybe those always on displays can display Coke or Pepsi ad or two while you are jogging and figure out that you are dehydrated and out of the water, as ad-tech is the only thing that works in the whole Google empire.

At least there is Xiaomi.

[tristanj]

You have it backwards. Fitbit was already dead before Google bought them. They couldn't keep up with the competition, they laid off hundreds of employees, and their stock crashed 90%. Google is mopping up the pieces. Spending $2B for Fitbit is chump change for Google.

[SurgeArrest]

I know about the state of Fitbit, but I would have preferred any other company over Google to buy them, including Samsung or Amazon.

[ehsankia]

I don't see any other company doing things as imaginative as Loon, Soli, Waymo or Duplex. What other company do you know with such a breadth of innovation?

But yknow, they killed Reader 10 years ago so you're right, RIP FitBit I guess.

[SurgeArrest]

I'm not talking about Google Reader, that's long gone. The companies you mentioned are technically Alphabet, not Google. If you look at Google all their consumer software efforts are an abomination. WearOS/Android Wear is at best at a level of a basement hobby project. Google Fit app became usable only after many years of updates. Their phones, i.e. hardware are the worst android phones except for the camera and even that leads only in still imaging. Technical details of how they implemented Android support for chrome OS just horror story for users who want to use it on underpowered laptops running Chrome OS. Hardware horrors continue with Google Home Mini, where G. had to disable the top button just days after releasing the device. Their 2 microphones better than 7 in Echo show its weakness as soon as you try to use Google Home to make calls - their AI can understand somehow what you said but humans can't. Their hardware products all feel like MVP from a startup not something designed for regular humans to use. Software horror stories continue, I was quite an early adopter of Google Apps for the business, it definitely was way better than early Office 365, where it would take 5 or more minutes for email travel between co-workers, however, if you signed up directly via Google (a major mistake at that time) there was no way even to backup your company accounts. Once Vault was introduced companies that were set up prior to the introduction of Vault couldn't migration to use Vault, a new company should be set up with 0 user migration tools available. Admin could not even edit the global address book to enter phone extensions of the employees. This was Google's business product. Look at Google's current Nest offering, barely changed in years, took years to deliver even simple multi-room sensors and speakers (Max for example) is the ugliest device you can bring into your home, reminding plasticky Altec Lansing beige speakers from 1990s.