There’s no doubt that Fitbit still has tremendous brand recognition. Whether or not the company’s current offering is the best option for you is certainly debatable, but design carries a lot of weight. Well, who better to start ending this than Google? The company definitely has a bad track record of mishandling brands and products.
However, the situation may not be too bad at this time. We’re definitely just piecing together clues, and there’s no formal announcement yet. Still, people noticed that on the software side, in some markets (mostly European), on the Google Play Store, there is a reference to “Google Health Premium” in relation to purchasing a Pixel Watch or Fitbit device. Naturally, this has led to speculation that Google is planning to move all the Fitbit software bits (no pun intended) under the Google Health umbrella. There’s also a new Google Health logo “leaked” to potentially support that restructuring theory. It looks like a paint-stroke heart icon drawn in the recognizable Google gradient color scheme.
We also have an interesting Apple App Store list with all in-app purchases for you to check out. It clearly shows the “Google Health Premium” option, which costs the same as Fitbit. However it’s unclear if these are the final prices, as most of these early “leaks” have been removed from the App Store. In any case, rebranding or not, this suggests that the Google Health Premium/Fitbit Premium plans will remain separate from Google’s One or AI Pro/Ultra subscription bundles. Fitbit Premium is currently bundled as a benefit in the Google General membership in the UK only, and is yet to expand to other markets.
However, it may not be all doom and gloom for the legendary Fitbit brand. As far as we currently know, the company’s next display-less fitness tracker will be called the Google Fitbit Air instead of using the Pixel branding. Hopefully, this shows that Google will keep the Fitbit branding for the hardware, at least for now.