- GeneralM&A
- December 17, 2020
- 4 minutes read
EU Clears Google’s Fitbit Buy
The European Union has announced that it’s cleared Google’s proposed $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit, clearing the hurdle for the deal which…
The European Union has announced that it’s cleared Google’s proposed $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit, clearing the hurdle for the deal which was announced last year November to be completed.
The EU issued its approval to Google after ‘in-depth’ scrutiny and has given it a go-ahead dependent on certain agreements to be made by Google.
Clearing the acquisition, the EU has stipulated commitments to be made by Google including;
- Not using health and fitness data collected from Fitbit watches and trackers for Google Ads.
- Maintaining a technical separation of data between Fitbit and other Google services.
- Ensure users from the EU will have a choice to grant or deny the storage of their Fitbit data by Google.
- Maintaining access to users’ health and fitness data for other software applications through the Fitbit Web API.
- Maintaining the current public API structure for Fitbit data on the Android platform owned by Google.
The stipulations listed above will last for ten years, with an option to extend it further held by the EU. The EU has cleared Google’s Fitbit purchase after months of investigation and now paved the way for Google to finalize the purchase.
Google swooped in to acquire Fitbit last year after the popular maker of smartwatches and fitness trackers shopped itself for sale following its five years of existence on the public markets.
“We can approve the proposed acquisition of Fitbit by Google because the commitments will ensure that the market for wearables and the nascent digital health space will remain open and competitive,” EU Executive Vice-President for competition policy Margrethe Vestager said in a press statement.
Photo credit: Fitbit
