The search giant is moving to integrate its services with that of the health tech company that it acquired. There will be a requirement for a Google account to be used for some uses of the devices and features by the year 2020.
The support page says that to create a new Fitbit account and to use the new devices and features, you'll have to use a Google account. At which point support for Fitbit accounts will be terminated, existing account holders will be able to move over to a Google account or stay with their existing Fitbit login. According to the FAQ, the company will be transparent with their customers about the timelines for ending their accounts.
There will be no support for existing accounts in 25 years.
As of the time of writing, users can either access their desktop accounts via a dedicated Fitbit login or through the option to "continue with Google." This is different from using your Google account because they are two different accounts that don't share data. In addition to not using said data to target Fitbit users within the European Economic Area with advertisements for at least 10 years, Google made binding commitments with the European Commission to keep the data separated from their systems.
When we asked if the change to account access would affect the commitments, a Fitbit spokesman said that they would remain in compliance. After a user signs up for or moves to a Google account, we will keep their health and fitness data separate from the data from the ads.
The move is positive for users of the fitness tracker. Benefits for the change include having a single login for Fitbit and other Google services, industry-leading account security, centralized privacy controls for Fitbit user data, and more features from the internet giant. Some skepticism is understandable given the history of forced account migrations.
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