EUROPEAN UNION INVESTIGATES GOOGLE’S PLAN TO BUY FITBIT

wearable devices into a virtual data silo. But the overture wasn’t enough to satisfy the European Commission.

European Union regulators opened an investigation Tuesday into Google’s plan to buy fitness tracking device maker Fitbit.

The EU’s executive commission said it was concerned the deal would entrench the U.S. tech giant’s position in the online ad market by “increasing the already vast amount of data”the company uses to personalize ads.“Our investigation aims to ensure that control by Google data collected through wearable devices as a result of the transaction does not distort competition,” said European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager.

The deal

Google agreed to buy Fitbit in November for $2.1 billion. Privacy, social justice and consumer groups have called on authorities to block the deal. The EU said the deal could expand Google’s “data advantage” and raise barriers for rivals to match Google’s online advertising services.

Fitbit pioneered wearable fitness technology, with devices that track activities such as running, cycling and swimming and record heart rates and sleep patterns. It has about 30 million active users worldwide and sold more than 100 million devices.

Google’s response

“This deal is about devices, not data,”said Rick Osterloh, Google’s senior vice president for devices and services.“We’ve been clear from the beginning that we will not use Fitbit health and wellness data for Google ads,”he wrote in a blog post. In an effort to allay apprehension, Google offered to put all information collected from

What’s next

Critics say big fines failed to change how tech giants behave and have called on regulators to take tougher action. The EU commission has until Dec. 9 to decide whether to block or approve the deal. The regulators will look into how Europe’s digital healthcare sector would be affected by the acquisition, and whether the purchase would give the company the ability to make it harder for wearable devices by rivals to work with Android.

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