
Fitbits Owners Are Losing A Key Smart Feature
Fitbit Versa 3
In the latest story of Fitbit's decline, Google Assistant support is being wound down in the company's wearables.
Users on Reddit report their Fitbit watches are displaying a message notifying them Assistant support is due to end.
'Google Assistant on Fitbit watches is being turned down, this feature will stop working in the coming weeks,' the message reads.
If you own a Fitbit watch, you may be wondering where this feature is in the first place. It only ever launched on the Fitbit Sense and Versa 3, which were introduced in 2020.
This feature discontinuation might be seen as part of Google's shift away from Assistant, towards using Gemini as an umbrella under which its smart features sit. But Versa 3 and Sense owners don't get access to a Gemini assistant, they only lose the original.
As noted by 9to5Google, this change was actually signalled by Google last year, when it announced voice control for the Versa 3 and Sense were due to be discontinued.
The newer Fitbit Sense 2 and Versa 4 never had any smart assistant features, despite being sold in as an upgrade to the original Sense and Versa 3.
'In regards to the voice assistant, let me share currently there are no plans to deploy Google Assistant on Sense 2 or Versa 4. I understand how much you'd like to have this feature available and we look forward to bringing this feature to future devices,' a Fitbit moderator wrote on the Fitbit community forum shortly after the watches' launch in 2022.
These watches were released after Google's acquisition of Fitbit was completed, and dimming down the Versa and Sense lines smarts may have been seen as a way to avoid in-house competition with the Pixel Watch family.
In August 2024, Google denied having discontinued Fitbit watches, following news production of new Sense 2 and Versa 4 models had ceased. You'll no longer find either on the Google Store, just the Fitbit Charge 6 and Inspire 3.
Google's Gemini assistant is expected to come to Wear OS watches, including the Pixel Watch 3, in the next major software update.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Engadget
25 minutes ago
- Engadget
OpenAI will reportedly start using Google's cloud servers
OpenAI has inked a deal with Google to begin using the latter's cloud service to meet its growing needs for increased computing capacity, according to a report by Reuters . This is something of a surprise, given that Google and OpenAI are rivals in the AI space. The terms of the deal remain unknown, but reporting indicates it has been in the negotiation phase for the past several months. This marks OpenAI's latest move to diversify its compute sources away from Microsoft Azure. Microsoft had been OpenAI's exclusive data center provider until January , after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman blamed the lack of compute capacity for the delay of several products. The company made a deal in March with CoreWeave to provide increased cloud compute capacity . That deal was worth nearly $12 billion. Microsoft Azure may no longer be the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI, but it's not as if the two companies have parted ways. OpenAI still relies heavily on Azure and the corporations are currently in negotiations to revise the terms of their partnership, which will likely revise the equity stake Microsoft holds in OpenAI . However, this is certainly a win for Google Cloud. ChatGPT poses the biggest threat to Google's search business in years , and this deal could indicate a softening between the two companies. In any event, it'll certainly bring a whole lot of money into Google Cloud's coffers. The platform made $43 billion last year and accounted for 12 percent of parent company Alphabet's overall revenue. The addition of OpenAI to its customer portfolio will likely extend those numbers dramatically. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. $GOOG CEO ADMITS GOOGLE CLOUD IS RUNNING INTO REAL CONSTRAINTS Not just from permitting delays, but from infrastructure bottlenecks. And when AI buildouts stall, there's usually one common denominator: not enough $NVDA-powered systems 👀 — Shay Boloor (@StockSavvyShay) May 20, 2025 There is an elephant in the room. Google has famously struggled to meet customer demand for its cloud services, and this was before bringing on OpenAI. Simply put, it needs more data centers . Will OpenAI get priority access over pre-existing customers? Engadget has reached out to Google and will update this story if we hear back. To that end, OpenAI is certainly thriving. The company recently announced that the current adoption rate of its software will lead to $10 billion in annual revenue as of June. It told investors that it has a target revenue goal of around $12 billion for the year, which it should easily meet with new subscribers.
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Google's AI search features are killing traffic to publishers
Google's AI Overviews and other AI-powered tools, including chatbots, are devastating traffic for news publishers, per a Wall Street Journal report. Now that people can simply ask a chatbot for answers – sometimes generated from news content taken without a publisher's knowledge – there's no need to click on Google's blue links. That means referrals to news sites are plummeting, cutting off the traffic publishers need to sustain quality journalism. Google released AI Overviews, its search result summary tool, last year. Its rollout hit traffic to sites like vacation guides, health tips, and product reviews, per the Journal. AI Mode, Google's ChatGPT competitor, is expected to hit traffic harder. It responds in a conversational tone with fewer external links. For The New York Times, the share of traffic from organic search to the paper's desktop and mobile sites fell to 36.5% in April 2025, down from 44% three years earlier, according to data from Similarweb cited in the Wall Street Journal report. Google likes to tell a different story. During Google's developer conference in May, the company said its AI Overviews feature has boosted search traffic — though maybe not for publishers. Publishers like The Atlantic and The Washington Post have spoken about the need for the industry to shift business models, and fast, to combat this threat to journalism. Some have resorted to doing content-sharing deals with AI companies for additional revenue streams. The Times most recently inked a deal with Amazon to license its editorial content to train the tech giant's AI platforms. Several publishers, including The Atlantic, have signed on to work with OpenAI. AI startup Perplexity's plan is to share advertising revenue with news publishers when its chatbot surfaces their content in response to a query.


Axios
37 minutes ago
- Axios
China now owns 20% of global ad market
China's booming digital economy has boosted its share of the global ad market, challenging the United States' long reign as the world's largest ad market. China's 20% share of the global ad market is now greater than the country's share of global GDP, according to WPP Media. Why it matters: Chinese ad sellers are finding enormous success selling ads to audiences globally, especially in the U.S. But U.S. tech giants are still largely banned from China. By the numbers: Nine of the world's top 25 ad sellers today are Chinese, including TikTok-parent ByteDance, Alibaba, Temu-owner PDD Holdings, Tencent, Baidu, Kuaishou, Meituan and Xiaomi, according to a new ad forecast from WPP Media. In 2025, the top five advertisers globally are all tech firms and two are Chinese: Google, Meta, ByteDance, Amazon and Alibaba. In 2011, the top five advertisers globally were mostly U.S. publishers: Google, Viacom and CBS, News Corp and Fox, Comcast and Disney. Catch up quick: The growth of China's economy and middle class over the past decade laid the foundation for the country's rapid ad expansion. But its mobile-first internet culture accelerated its dominance. Chinese tech firms have been innovating for the smartphone "to an even greater and faster degree than in other markets which went through a desktop phase first," said Kate Scott-Dawkins, the global president of business intelligence at WPP Media, who authored the report. Zoom in: Over the past several years, Chinese ad sellers have gained dominance by leaning into AI-fueled retail media innovation. This year, China's share of all retail media globally is 44.1%, driven by e-commerce giants like and Alibaba, per WPP Media. But rivals are gaining ground. By 2030, China's share of retail media ad dollars globally is expected to dip to less than 40% as the U.S., U.K. and others scale up, according to Scott-Dawkins. Zoom out: China's ascent in the global advertising hierarchy mirrors a broader shift in tech and economic influence. Chinese platforms are shaping ad innovation with AI-driven commerce and mobile-first experiences. Social and entertainment apps like TikTok have supercharged their ad businesses by expanding their live shopping and e-commerce features. Chinese platforms like TikTok and Temu are rapidly scaling in Western markets. But U.S. tech firms like Google and Meta remain largely blocked from operating in China, limiting the opportunity for reciprocal growth.