The Google-Fitbit integration needs work
The Pixel Watch 2 made better use of Fitbit’s expertise this year, but it’s not great that the app had yet another major outage the day the devices shipped. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Change is hard to do well — a lesson Google’s been learning all too well when it comes to wearables. The transition from Wear OS 2 to 3 has been messy, and so has the ongoing integration of Fitbit into Google’s greater ecosystem. On the eve of the Pixel Watch 2 and Fitbit Charge 6 shipping to customers, just as reviewers published their takes on the second-gen smartwatch, Fitbit suffered its second major app outage this year.
The outage was a doozy. Fitbit’s own status page has a lengthy breakdown, but the gist is that around 3PM ET on October 11th, roughly 50 percent of users who use Google accounts to log in to the site saw blank tiles and screens, error messages, and missing data. That escalated to 4 percent of all users an hour…
