Google's acquisition of Fitbit under scrutiny by EU regulators

Regulators from the European Union are investigating the long-term implications of Tech Giant Google acquiring Fitbit and researching the possibility if of those move allowing Google to drive rival manufactures of wearable devices, app developers and other online service providers out of business. According to reports, if Google is able to kill off its competition it will boost its own monopoly over online advertising.

EU wary of Google's growing dominance

As per reports, EU regulators are concerned that that the entirety of Fitbit’s data about its users, such a data about health, location, heart rate and calorie burned will expand Alphabet Inc (owner of Google’s) market dominance and pseudo monopoly. According to reports, the European Commission will come to a decision on Google’s acquisition of Fitbit by July 20.

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According to reports, even the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has bee wary of the deal and has launched its own investigation. Much like the EU regulators, the ACCC is concerned about the long term affects this deal will have on digital marketing and also health markets. As per reports, Fitbit announced the deal back in November last year and revealed that Google would be acquiring it for US$2.1 billion. Many non-governmental privacy groups are also against the move.

ACCC chair Rod Sims has claimed that Fitbit has been gathering user’s health data for almost a decade now and that this deal will allow Google to get a more comprehensive set of user data. The ACCC also claimed that much of Google’s monopoly was due to its vast search and location data as well as ba ground data it has collected through third-party apps.

(Representative Image)(Image Credit Pixabay)

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