Technology giant Google is known for many things, but wearable technology is not one of them. Still, Google's Wear OS (operating system), which integrates with the Google Fit app, is used by many smartwatch companies including Fossil and Huawei. Google's major advance in health tracking was its acquisition of Fitbit in late 2019. However, Fitbit's IP, which includes the largest number of documents (214) belonging to a single assignee in the consumer sleep sector, is still assigned to the original company as the acquisition is still under regulatory review and has not been finalized.
It seems that Google is still interested in maintaining its own consumer sleep portfolio. The company recently filed for two sleep tech patents in March of 2020 after a year and a half without activity. Additionally, Google Fit just announced rollout of new features including tracking of sleep stages, which was not previously available. But will this activity pay off?
Google's strength in platform and API development gives it access to a massive amount of user data, which is extremely valuable. In October of 2020, Google told the regulatory European Commission that it would not use Fitbit data for advertising in an attempt to get around antitrust laws and push the acquisition through to approval. If that's the case, Google may indeed benefit from its own development of health and sleep tracking software that will give it easier access to app data. In the meantime, the usual rivals Apple and Samsung have much larger portfolios in the sector, with Apple having thirty (30) documents and Samsung sixty-five (65) to Google's eleven (11). You can keep an eye on Google's portfolio and how it changes as the Fitbit acquisition progresses on the Magic Number® Consumer Sleep Patent Radian®.
