I'm not sure people really need biometrics data to advertise to you more effectively.

I haven't had a Fitbit in years, so I'm sure some have GPS, which would increase the footprint of GPS tracking for runners that don't run with their phone (even if that not many), then you're getting ads about healthy food options near the start/stop point of your trail.

It could tell Google if you've been having trouble sleeping, then you're getting sleep aid or sleep study or high end mattress ads. I'm sure the fitbit can detect certain workout routines based on physical movement, and can cater ads to users based on whether they're weight trainers or endurance trainers as well as skill level.

I think there is a ton of high value information that can be gathered from a Fitbit for Google.

Or, when it's noticed a lull, and kmows you're influencable: Hire this personal trainer to get you back exercising!

Using heartrate, activity levels, mobilty can probably infer a broad picture of someones health, which of course, would be very valuable to health insurance/life assurance companies.

With this level of privatised surveilance, I'll stick with my mechanical automatic watch thanks.

Located in Hong Kong, elevated heart rate in the evening, spikes match tweets about police activity against protesters? Be prepared to be visited by the authorities.

google would sell "attention time to people whos heart rate spiked during the world series" but not tell the customers who those people were. you would be outing yourself if you click the ad.

So google will know what stores you’re near, what people you’re near, and for how long.

There are so many bad implications of this, it will never outweigh any good Google claims this will do.

If you buy the first loser, you're just paying more to lose. Also according to this Fitbit is #5 in terms of devices sold (which make them look much worse when you consider how cheap some of their products are), and they have been steadily declining for years. They went from 45% just 5 years ago to 6% this year. That is horrible. Unless Google has an ulterior motive, like primarily using FitBit as a source of data for targeted ads, this is a bad acquisition.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/435944/quarterly-wearabl...

Or they could just end up with Wear OS on worse hardware and a disaster.

Condescending emails about how many 'leafs' I've earned every few months and forcing me to login to the device over Google instead of my Nest account is what I'm faced with now.

Their only notable hardware acquisitions that I can think of were Motorola which was a disaster, Nest which is barely muddling along, and the semi-acquisition of HTC’s hardware team that made the Pixel. While the Pixel may be a great phone, it isn’t taking the world by storm

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... for a good chronologic list.

https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/did-google-really-lo...

A month ago WeWork was valued several times higher than it is today. It doesn't matter if you got a good deal on paper - what matters is if you got a good deal.

Now let's not forget why Google bought Moto's patents. Just before Google's acquisition, a consortium led by Apple bought Nortel's old, lesser patents for $4.5B. Ever heard of Apple's patent troll outfit Rockstar (or Mobilestar)? They tried to run a patent extortion ring against Android OEMs in the famed Eastern District of Texas with Apple behind the curtain. That is, until Google and Samsung's countersuit convinced the courts that the patent troll's litigation strategy "was consistent with Apple's particular business interest." They quickly dropped their sham lawsuits when the courts agreed to transfer venue to Apple's backyard.

Needlessly to say, Moto's patents in the wrong hands would have been a devastating blow far more than $4B to Google's business.

Still, the folks at M-CAM decided to put the Motorola Mobility patent portfolio to the test by using a variety of scoring techniques, and believes that the portfolio isn't all that valuable, both in the aggregate and at the specific level. It basically found that about 48% of the patents are probably worthless. At the specific level, the company looked at the 18 patents that Motorola Mobility had asserted against Apple, suggesting that these particular patents may be the "stars" of the bunch -- but, again, found that nine of those patents were "impaired," and were unlikely to be very strong or valuable.

IIRC, fewer than 2-3% of all patents actually survive and are upheld in patent trials, so they are not probably wrong when they say 48% of Moto's patents are worthless, but that isn't saying much. Take for instance, Apple's design and utility patents asserted against Samsung in Germany. All, 100%, of their patent and claims were invalidated, and declared worthless. I guess Moto's 48% is far better than 100% worthless. The key questions re: Moto's patents were their applicability, not their validity. Moto had filed lawsuits against Apple and Microsoft before Google bought it -- the court had to address Moto's appropriate FRAND licensing fee for SEPs (802 wireless standards and H.264 video encoding standards) and proper court jurisdiction.

IMHO, there is no reason to believe that Moto acquisition was a waste of money and, considering Android's popularity and success of Android today, despite threats from Apple's patent trolling (and even Microsoft), Google's strategy patent strategy worked well.

Apple sued Samsung not for the Android parts but for the design of the phones.

Microsoft was a tiny iceberg and exemplified what could have happened to Android. Samsung was reportedly paying close to $1B for a couple of years, until MS bought Nokia.

Google effectively neutered Apple's patent trolling operation by threatening to expose the troll's true motive, and prevented potential threat from Moto patent portfolio by preemptively purchasing it -- on the cheap.

Those have all been industry defining.

Google has never released Youtube numbers, so I can't say that. I will tell you that youtube is the dominant video platform on the internet. You do realize Youtube shows ads? and those ads are part of google's ad revenue? But the numbers have been inferred "YouTube probably generates $16 billion to $25 billion in annual revenue"[1]

Waze drives all of their google maps traffic data. Again, industry's best.

Doubleclick is the basis for ALL non text advertising at google.

I'm starting to get the picture you really just want to argue your point, without any actual facts. Google has a verifiable history of successful acquisitions. Just apparently non that you "like"

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/technology/youtube-financ...

https://fortune.com/2019/10/11/waze-google-maps-how-it-works...

Can't you just log on to the appropriate USA government website and download the submitted and audited accounts?

Isn't USA supposed to be a bastion of capitalism, and isn't a central feature of capitalism that it optimises the distribution of resources, that optimisation being predicated on readily available information -- the system doesn't optimise at all without information flow.

Please don't tell me Google don't have public accounts???

There shouldn't be any mystery here, you should just be able to read it off the P&L sheets?

Personally I think they are great at finding interesting and relevant ads, which is why I don't block the ads. Howerver I hear the experience varies.

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/youtube-statistics/#6

Youtube or other platforms may not make strong profits themselves, but contribute strategically or operationally to the overall Alphabet bottom line.

So the discussion here is not 'Is Youtube making a profit' but 'Does Youtube contribute, directly or indirectly, to the overall Google/Alphabet enterprise strategy?'. In that case, it is entirely possible for major acquisitions to not appear to be 'for the money' but are still essential in driving shareholder value.

I think by working with a cell phone carrier in the US and bundling enough must have apps a manufacturer could get away with having a non Google certified Android phone. Especially if they could use Nokia’s Here for maps.

Also, at the time who had a better reputation on phone hardware than Nokia? The MS/Nokia phones were also very well reviewed for the hardware too. It didn't matter, the software platform was too late to the party. There simply wasn't, and still isn't a significant market for a third OS platform.

Notice that they don’t offer Google Fi for sell internationally and they also don’t offer free roaming like t-mobile.

The hardware supply chain capability at Google is beginning to ramp up, but is nowhere near the maturity it needs to be to support a global rollout.

https://deepmind.com/blog/announcements/deepmind-health-join...

Citation please. Everything I've seen is a mix of "breaking even", "still unprofitable", and "adding billions to their bottom line". I.e. nobody really knows because Google doesn't break out YouTube financials.

In any case, I still think calling the largest, most successful video serving site on the web "not successful" is laughable.

My second point would be to say, is a business only successful if it always makes profits? How many years does it need to be in business to be a success? If I made a company that has a good run for 20 years then tanked, was it a success. Does it need to be run by my grandkids before it's a success?

Isn't that true for every money losing company? They make money as long as you ignore expenses?

The usual retort is "our addressable market that we have only started to penetrate will allow us to have a large enough marginal profit to cover our fixed cost".

But isn't that also in the pitch deck of every startup looking for funding? "There are x number of dog owners in the world. The total addressable market is ten gajillion if we capture 10% of that we will be worth $some_outrageous_number"

I've been around long enough to recognize that the criticisms often look virtually identical for both cases, so you really have to do a lot of the legwork yourself.

The one thing that I'm confident of with Uber is that they take in more from me as a customer than they pay the driver. Is it enough more to build a sustainable business? Considering the volumes and margin, one would hope so, and frankly I find it hard to understand how their spending is so high. But I've never tried to do the math...

Keyhole is another acquisition in the mapping space that I feel has degraded since being acquired by Google. I was a paying customer of Keyhole and loved it, since becoming free under Google, it’s basically stagnated and some of the features I used are now gone.

They often include Waze reported events in Google Maps now. That was the part that I was referring to. I'm not sure if Google Maps reported issues feed back into Waze as well, but I would expect them to.

I hadn’t seen that, so then yeah I agree it is improved.

For stupid acquisitions, look no further than everything Andy Rubin bought, from Motorola to robotics companies.

Nokia Maps pre-existed Waze and wouldn't have benefited from purchasing it.

That used to be the case, but they’ve rapidly improved while Google Maps on iOS has mostly stagnated. There’s feature in Apple Maps on iOS 13 that I find useful that nobody else has even.

I’m citing Wikipedia for conciseness. You can look up the article’s references for citations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maps

Where is the data that large numbers of people aren't installing Google Maps on iOS despite iOS crippling third party maps apps? Not in your link.

Btw, you can trigger Google Maps with Siri by creating a simple shortcut and when you search for a place on google. It launches Google Maps.

That does not contradict the fact that many people install Google Maps. Reread my comments.

> Btw, you can trigger Google Maps with Siri by creating a simple shortcut and when you search for a place on google.

That does not make it work in all apps.

The app is crippled in iOS, yet people still go out of their way to use it to avoid the dumpster fire that is Apple Maps, many years after Apple Maps launched. If Apple Maps existed on Android, it would have barely any users at all, even though Apple Maps would have access to exactly the same APIs as Google Maps on Android. I'm sure Apple would like to have the traffic data that Android users could provide, but they understand that they can't get that data if nobody uses their app.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-google-lawsuit/ora...

Google Maps and Earth started from an aquisation. Youtube was right out bought by them. Google Groups, Picassa, Blogger, Google Docs are more, though a bit less successfull.

It's fun to play this game!

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/26/apple-buys-autonomous-vehicl...

Google doesn't talk about it much, but the founders are still interested in the kind of non-dystopia cyberpunk future where a personal assistant is virtually perched on your shoulder, helping you get through your day like a non-invasive cyber-butler. It's the notion that drove Glass and drives Home and Assistant.

Having an in on medical observation technology fits into that mold. I doubt they'd publicize that as their goal until and unless they have something to show for it though.

Truthfully, with AI chips in fitbits who knows what they’ll be able to use it for

In the US, the Nokia brand had basically disappeared outside of Symbian pre-paid feature phones which isn't a great association to have. In Europe, a lot of people seemed unhappy with the switch to Windows Phone and killing Meego/SwipeUI (the n9 sold gangbusters considering it wasn't available in any of the Nokia markets that could actually afford an expensive smartphone). Finally, lots of people were upset that Europe's flagship phonemaker was sold off to Microsoft and then gutted costing a ton of good-paying jobs.

Next, there's the general issue that the MS brand is a bit poisonous to a lot of people. Windows has (somewhat undeservedly) a pretty bad reputation with performance, bloat/slowdowns, and reliability. When Android and iOS basically "just work" and Windows not being necessary, not a lot of people want to deal with perceived potential issues (real or imaginary).

Finally, on the development side, most of the people making apps didn't seem keen on the Windows Phone platform and their passive neglect was a huge complication (supposedly, even multi-million dollar incentives couldn't get the devs on board).

Waiting years between updates with no news pushes away OEMs and ensures consumers forget you even exist.

What makes him a useful authority?

Some of what they struggle with shouldn't be as hard as they seem to make it...

Extending their brand into consumer products + their 'home portfolio' is actually a strong 'vision' not lack thereof.

I suggest however, that their phone, home etc. might well be done under a separate brand, while still under the Google umbrella.