On Thursday 17 December, the European Commission cleared the acquisition of Fitbit by the tech giant Google.
Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of Competition Policy, said that Google’s commitments “will ensure that the market for wearables and the nascent digital health space will remain open and competitive”. "The commitments will determine how Google can use the data collected for ad purposes, how interoperability between competing wearables and Android will be safeguarded and how users can continue to share health and fitness data, if they choose to”, she added.
The Commission had concerns that the transaction, as originally notified, would harm competition in several markets: advertising, access to the digital application programming interface (web API) in the market for digital health services, portable technology devices worn on the wrist.
Google has offered the following commitments. The US giant will not use data relating to the health and well-being of users located in the European Economic Area that is collected from portable technology devices worn on the wrist and other Fitbit devices for the purposes of Google Ads. Google will maintain a technical separation of Fitbit user data.
Google will maintain the ability for software applications to access user health data via theFitbit web API. This access will be free of charge and subject to the consent of the users.
The multinational company will continue to grant Android original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) the right to use these public APIs, which include all the essential functionality that wearable mobile technology devices need to interact with an Android smartphone, free of charge. Google will grant these manufacturers access to the Android APIs that it makes available to developers of applications for Android smartphones, including the APIs that are part of Google Mobile Services. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)