Google has completed its $2.1 billion Fitbit acquisition and announced it officially earlier this month. The popular wearable brand is now getting a warm welcome to the Google family as Fitbit gets featured on a banner in the Play Store.
Notably, Fitbit was acquired by Google for $2.1 billion back in November 2019. However, the acquisition was held up by an antitrust investigation in the EU.
Fast forward to now, according to a new report by Android Central, Google has added a new banner that showcases the Fitbit products up top. Moreover, it says, “Fitbit, welcome to the Google Family.”
This is an official way of welcoming the popular wearable brand, Fitbit to the Google family. Besides, this Fitbit banner is visible in the Google Play Store globally. To be specific, users in the US, the UK, Japan, and the Netherlands, etc, are seeing the new banner.
But that is all for the moment. Google hasn’t started selling the products from its official Google Store. And currently, there is just this promotional banner that is showing up on the Google Play Store.
When you tap on the Explore button below the welcome message, it redirects you to the Fitbit website. This is because a few regulators are still looking into the acquisition. Once that is cleared, you will be able to buy Fitbit products from Google Store.
Google has already started integrating data from Fitbit wearables into the Google Assistant
While the Google Store will take sometime before including Fitbit products, Google has already started integrating data from Fitbit into the Google Assistant.
According to one of our reports, Google quietly added the Wellness section and replaced the Sleep section on the Google Assistant app. It proactively tracks your health and fitness data and shows up on compatible smart displays.
The integration of Fitbit with Google Assistant will show sleep, exercise, nutrition, and general wellness data on smart displays like the Nest Hub. Note that the Sleep section has not been removed. But it has been integrated inside this Wellness section.
So, treat this Wellness section as a single-place for all your fitness-related data. At the moment, only the Sleep option is visible in this Wellness section, but soon more activities will be added to it.
Besides, there is no mention of the acquisition from either side, or there is any press release. This gives us some hints that the acquisition is still under investigation.
Let us hope that the dispute is resolved quickly so, that just like the Nest Hub, you will be able to purchase Fitbit products from the Google Store.