How many steps was that, then? Uncle Sam's lawyers, watchdog race to probe Google's Fitbit gobble The US Department of Justice has beat out the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to become the top dog in an antitrust review of Google’s proposed purchase of fitness tracker Fitbit. According to sources who have briefed several media outlets, both arms of the government wanted to take a look at the $2.1bn buy. The FTC would …
Google are after a Co for the data slurping potential, nothing to do with if the Co is any good / the product has integrity anymore, it's all about how much data will it provide, and that, right there should be the only trail worth any effort to follow :o(
also Google after yet more data for ad revenue - colour me surprised
I can see the potential of collecting and aggregating large amounts of data on individuals, but only for selling as datasets to other businesses - for example I am sure health insurance companies would love to see fitbit data to help them increase your premiums.
However there must be a limit to this from an advertising perspective. Even if my best friend was deciding what adverts I should see online, I would be very surprised if I would suddenly start buying more stuff that I don't need.
Maybe I am looking at this the wrong way. It could be that companies that want to advertise simply don't understand that after a certain level of targeting, your revenue will not increase, but your costs will. If companies (and political parties) continue to demand ever more detailed targeting capability, then Google is simply meeting that demand.
Google are after a Co for the data slurping potential
Yes. Google's business model is basically advertising plus "O hai, we see you collect data. We would like that data".
Then after a few years, when the data is no longer contributing sufficient information, they'll kill the product off.
In this case, personally, I don't care; I've never owned and never will own a "fitness tracker", as I find instrumentality of that sort obnoxious. But Google's general data-slurping behavior is annoying.
If only you had access to some sort of global collection of information which could satisfy that curiosity.
My first result from that search was an article which provides one set of answers to your query: in 2001, 2002, and 2011 (twice). Locating other examples is left as an exercise for the reader.
Anybody remember when tracking data was shown from military bases on where personnel ran based on FitBit data that was "shared". There were even tracks that are thought to be from guards doing their rounds. Of course, Goggle would never sell any of that sort or information (publicly).
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