As ever more people use their smartphones to monitor their athletic activity and we witness the impending burst in the use of ‘wearables’, Google has launched Google Fit, an app to keep count of your daily exercise habits that takes data from the sensors of the device itself as well as third-party apps. Google Fit is now available for Android, and also has a web version.
At the business-strategy level it almost seems to be an answer to Apple’s HealthKit system. In any case, it’s clearly an ideal moment to launch new ‘first-party’ apps now that Android 5 Lollipop is right around the corner. Basically, we’re looking at an athletic information aggregator that can interact with other well-known services like Runtastic, RunKeeper, or Noom Coach apps. It’s also cross-platform, as it’s associated with your Google account so you can consult or add data from your phone, tablet, or desktop computer.
The app lets you auto-assign a series of daily goals where you can specify when and what type of activity you plan to do (run, walk, cycle, and ‘other’), as well as the session duration. Then, thanks to your device’s geolocation and accelerometer features, these goals can be contrasted with what you actually do. All this data will be registered and later displayed on performance tables and graphs. You can also compare this later with your own fitness info, adding your gender, height, and weight so that Google Fit can evaluate your history to document changes in your fitness level.
Besides the first version of the app, Google has made the official API available so that developers can integrate the data collected by their own sports apps with Fit. Although there are already several compatible apps, it’s hoped that over the next few weeks even more will be adapted for Fit alongside the launch of Android 5.0 next November 6.
