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A fitness band is for bettering yourself, but casually. It’s lightweight, easy to wear, and not something you have to think too hard about. It’s cheaper than a smartwatch. You get your steps, basic heart rate, and some sleep tracking. Maybe you can see the time, maybe you can’t. But unlike many wearables today, a fitness tracker wasn’t truly meant to be a companion for your phone and all the overwhelm that comes with it. It was a simple tool with a simple purpose: to make you move more.
Ten years ago, nobody was better at this than Fitbit.
For a time, it was the Kleenex or Band-Aid of wearables — a brand so ubiquitous that it was synonymous with an entire product category. Your mom probably doesn’t remember a Jawbone, FuelBand, or a Mio Slice. But for a while, everybody called a fitness band a Fitbit.
But Fitbit hasn’t been quite the same since Google acquired the company in 2021.
The distinction between Fitbit and Google products has been murky ever since. In many ways, it echoed how Google handled acquiring Nest. At first, the two felt like relatively separate entities. Then, slowly over the years, users were encouraged to migrate accounts from Nest to Google. Products were first rebranded as Nest by Google, then Google Nest. The Nest app is still available, but it’s in maintenance mode. It works with older products, but you can’t pair it with new ones.
The Charge 6 in 2023 was the last Fitbit hardware before the Air earlier this week. (I’m not counting the Ace LTE since it was for kids.) Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The Nest-ification of Fitbit has differences — for example, there was a particular rough patch where Fitbit suffered several major server outages, and users were enraged when Google started sunsetting beloved social features. (2023 was a tough transition year.) But one of the most confusing aspects was the product lineup. When the Google Pixel Watch debuted in 2022, it was alongside a new Fitbit Versa 4 and a Fitbit Sense 2. That’s three smartwatches total, with the two Fitbit watches having nerfed features. Differentiating them all was a headscratcher. The Fitbit Charge 6 followed a year later, and there has been radio silence until the Fitbit Air announcement earlier this week. (I don’t really count the Ace LTE — that was for kids.)
In the meantime, Fitbit became Fitbit by Google. Users are being encouraged to migrate their Fitbit accounts to Google accounts. The Air is the Google Fitbit Air now. And on May 19th, the Fitbit app will be no more. The green-and-white Fitbit icon will be replaced by a multicolored heart icon for Google Health.
“Fitbit’s DNA is a great tracker — an accessible tracker that everyone can go and use,” explains Rishi Chandra, Google’s vice president of health and home. “One question I get is, ‘Well, why did it take so long to launch new hardware?’ The truth is, we didn’t want to launch just another tracker.”
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