New Fitbit Devices Will Need to be Linked to a Google Account Next Year

upstart writes:

New Fitbit devices will need to be linked to a Google account next year:

Starting next year, you'll only be able to activate newly released Fitbit models using a Google account. It doesn't come as a surprise for Google's services to become more intertwined with Fitbit's fitness devices after the tech giant acquired the latter for $2.1 billion in 2021. But now, we have a timeline for when Fitbit accounts will no longer be essential. As spotted by 9to5Google, Fitbit has revealed in its help page that it will launch support for Google accounts in 2023. Signing up for Fitbit and activating new devices will require the use of a Google account after that.

[...] Fitbit says its parent company made binding commitments not to use your health and wellness data for ads and will keep that information separate from what it does send to advertisers. The tech giant had insisted from the time it announced the acquisition that it will not be using Fitbit data for ad targeting. In 2020, it formally made the commitment to the European Commission to ward off an antitrust probe.

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