HRM 587 Week 7 Course Project; Communicating the Change Paper - Fitbit, San Francisco

On November 1, 2019, Google started to focus on trying to purchase Fitbit. At this point Fitbit was already a well-established business in the health/wearables side of things. Then Fitbit was purchased for 2.1 billion by google. The deal was one of the biggest moves in the 昀椀tness technology side of things and that is what mainly helped google get into the wearable health watches. The company was o昀케cially purchased by google on January 14, 2021. The whole process took almost a year and a half because o昀케cials in the United States, European Union, and Australia. When Fitbit was purchased Fitbit, it had over 29 million ac琀椀ve users in more than 100 countries and they also had sold more than 120 million watches and other things over its 琀椀me. The company had been losing money on its main thing but was making a lot of money with its smartwatch and had just also made something new called launched Fitbit Premium which was a subscrip琀椀on health service. Googles primary objec琀椀ve was make more be琀琀er technology faster to be able to compete with apple in the watch/health market. This goal was more of an internal thing and to the public many things were not known. Overview The Fitbit purchase by google was a carefully calculated move. “There were almost 3 di昀昀erent phases when looking at it now (King).” The 昀椀rst thing was in November of 2019 which was basically when google made the announcement to purchase Fitbit the period where they are trying to purchase it for that year and a half which basically had to be done certain ways so everyone isn’t sa琀椀s昀椀ed but just not angry by not knowing what the plan really is. with employees high while Park told his loyal customers that nothing really will be changing and everything will be the same. This made sure no people could produce their own ideas and gave stakeholders a sense of direc琀椀on. Data Privacy The most awkward thing through the whole process was health data privacy. Fitbit devices collect biometric data like heart rate, sleep pa琀琀erns, stress levels, blood oxygen levels, and menstrual cycles. Investors and many people of the public worried that the data would be used by google to help their ads be more accurate. The way that googles communicated they directly took this on. Osterloh always said the phrase “devices, not data” to help people and the stakeholders understand his posi琀椀on. Google and Fitbit made a lot of promises to the European Commission • They agreed Fitbit health data will not be used for ads on google. • They will put the health data in a di昀昀erent place from the google ad data. • The Fitbit Web API will stay open to everyone for free. • People get to keep full control of their data and delete it if they decide they want to. • A trustee will be hired to make sure these needs are met. These commitments were said to all the higher o昀케cials but