After the acquisition closes in 2021, Google’s Fitbit fiction largely means a reduction in features and a focus by Google on driving people to the Fitbit app. Longtime users flock to Fitbit — sometimes at Fitbit’s request — to share hundreds of complaints about recent changes. However, Google is hardly responsive to customer feedback.
The suspension of the web app angered users
In June, Google announced it was discontinuing the Fitbit.com online dashboard. After July 8, users looking for similar features provided by the web app should download the Fitbit mobile app. On the Fitbit community forum, a company representative confirmed that users’ “details and logging of activity, food, sleep and weight” will remain available through the app. However, the change inconveniences users who prefer or need access to such data on a larger screen than the phone. Worse, the app lacks some of the features of the online dashboard, such as food logging.
Despite these obvious user drawbacks, the need to use the Google Fitbit seems to have driven the change. Announcing the news on the community forum, a Fitbit company representative said:
Combined with Google’s decades of being the best at understanding data, our mission is to be a combined Fitbit and Google team. Consolidating the Fitbit.com dashboard into the Fitbit app is part of that mission and will allow us to focus on features that provide even more valuable information to our users.
Google is investing in the Fitbit app, which includes plans to let premium subscribers soon test Fitbit’s experimental generative AI features. Google is also developing a large language model for new features for the Fitbit app that users are forced to use. Google has been pushing users towards the Fitbit app for some time now; in 2022, Fitbit devices lost the ability to sync with computers.
It’s worth mentioning that users unhappy with Fitbit are more likely to complain online. Notably, however, Fitbit’s announcement has been met with 1,523 (as of this writing) mostly negative responses, with new responses still arriving. Another thread on the Fitbit forum asking to keep the web dashboard currently has 601 upvotes. You can also find outraged users on Reddit.
The most common complaints are around the loss of previously available features.
“Change is good. Removing key features is not,” community member Seymourh86 wrote in June. “Unless you want people to go to competitors…”
This week’s comments show that users haven’t gotten over the change. DebL555, for example, said today that they were “extremely frustrated and disappointed that I can’t access my dashboard on my computer.” NessWeb yesterday called the change an “incredibly bad decision”, adding:
This is especially terrible for anyone with a visual impairment or finger dexterity problem. It’s still bad for everyone else because you just can’t see as much on a 3″ screen as you can on a real computer…
Bring back the web interface!!
As has been the case every time there have been issues with Fitbit since the acquisition, theories that Google is screwing up Fitbit to push people to the Pixel Watch have been rife. Others on the community forum were upset because they felt Google was ignoring feedback from longtime Fitbit customers.
In June, a user going by jessicabilasano wrote:
I just hope Fitbit doesn’t end up like every other Google purchase that turns into a nightmare product/company. Google, instead of removing things that users like about Fitbit’s features, why not improve them? Listen to your customers/users.
However, not responding to public, negative customer feedback has become commonplace for the Fitbit brand recently.
