I expected the typical "Our Incredible Journey" type spiel, but boy, did that escalate quickly.

I'm surprised by this, Pebble and Fitbit always seemed like upstanding companies. To me, this is a dick move.

They could've said "reach out to Fitbit instead".

Dick move, maybe. But when you have no money, you're limited in what you can do. As a separate cousin-post said, this is why Fitbit bought some assets, but ultimately they probably didn't get stuck with any liability (e.g. warranty issues and the like). Business-wise, that's probably the absolute right move to make.

> They could've said "reach out to Fitbit instead".

Which would be even more of a dick move because Fitbit will tell you to go pound sand because they aren't responsible.

Also not super legal, probably. I'm sure if you have a problem, you could argue that Fitbit needs to handle it.

This is exactly why FitBit only bought the IP - it means they don't have any legal responsibilities the other company has, such as warranties.

They may not have any Legal Liablity, but it going to be a PR problem for them

I know I will not buy any FitBit products either, if this acceptable to FitBit, to do nothing for these customers knowing this was going to happen then FiTBit does not deserve anyone's money either.

It would have been better for the company to just Die if they were that bad off (which I have my doubts unless they were Seriously mismanaged)

These Acquihires where a large company partially buys out another company for there personnel and/or IP shuttering the original product and fucking over customers need to come with at minimum a HUGE PR back lash for the company buying the assets to make them at least do right by the original customers offering things like Reasonable levels of support, Transition planning, etc

Depends exactly what they bought. Those liabilities might be owned by the remaining shell which is now in administation or a vapour-like "parent company" rather than having been transferred to fitbit.

Maybe not moral, but quite probably perfectly legal.

I was not involved in the structuring of this deal, but have been involved in deals like this one. The terms are very arduously worked through to make sure the asset acquirer isn't accidentally picking up a liability they don't want.

Regarding the morality question: consider the alternatives. The moral choice is in the hands of the seller. A buyer is an option among many.

That might be why they said they're dissolving the company and "many members" of their team will be moving to Fitbit.

You could argue it certainly, but I suspect it might cost a bit, and you would end up at the bottom of a long list of creditors.