Google Fit Is Android's New Health and Fitness Tracking Service

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Image: Google

By Samantha Murphy Kelly2014-06-25 18:47:49 UTC

Google announced on Wednesday during its Google I/O Developers Conference a new initiative called Google Fit for Android, which will serve as a fitness and health tracking platform.

The company announced that Google Fit is an open platform that is now available for developers. The platform SDK will be available in just a few weeks.

By using sensors on mobile devices and wearables — like Google's smartwatch collection — users will be able to have a better handle on their various health and fitness-related data to give better recommendations. For example, weightloss app Noom (an early partner of Google Fit) can combine workout data, your weight in real-time (it works with the Withings smart scale) and your eating habits, it monitors your activity and makes suggestions (i.e. when your cookie habit is getting too high, it will intervene).

Other partners include Nike+, LF, Adidas, Basis, Runtastic, RunKeeper, Polar, HTC and Motorola.

The news comes just a few weeks after Apple announced a new Health app and a service called HealthKit coming to iOS 8.

The concept is similar to Apple's Passbook app, the iPhone's virtual pocket for things like airline boarding passes, movie tickets and coupons. It will be able to pull in data from other third-party apps such as Nike to keep all your health-related information in one hub.