Google To Launch Google Fit Health Apps At I/O

Google is reported to be planning to launch a wearable health ecosystem at the Google I/O event later this month, following a similar launch at Apple’s WWDC.

Google’s Fit service will aggregate data from popular health trackers including wearable devices, and will be launched at the Google I/O developer conference on 25 and 26 June, according to a Forbes report.  It sounds remarkably similar to Apple’s HealthKit which also aggregates health data, and services from Samsung.

Survival of the fittest?

Google hasn’t said anything on the subject yet, but multiple sources say it will be announcing APIs to interface health data, alongside partnerships with fitness device makers. Online speculation is now wondering if the purported service will be an integral part of Google’s Android mobile operating system or an app running on Android devices.

Google had a previous offering called Google Health, before the current excitement over wearable devices created the prospect of a surge of health data to organise. Google Health was closed in 2012, as part of a purge by Larry Page of a lot of Google experimental projects.

Google still has plenty of blue sky work going on however. Its Calico project, launched in September, is a “moonshot” effort designed to combat aging, which has been snapping up prominent genetecists and other scientists. It most recently employed Cynthia Kenyon, ageneticist from the University of California whose work has doubled the lifespan of a species of roundworms.

A data aggregator for health tracker data is not a bid to extend human life, however, more of an effort to fend off competition from other players in a potentially big market.

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