Now that Google's acquisition of Fitbit is official, the question is what the search giant will do with it. When the news broke on Friday, Google's Rick Osterloh said the company sees the deal as an "opportunity to invest even more in Wear OS, as wel...
Most of us have a lot of photos on Facebook, but don't actually use that platform as a long-term storage solution. Google Photos has become the go-to service for saving digital photographs, and if you haven't yet moved your collection of Facebook pictures to Google Photos, there's never been a better time to finally make the switch. The process can be a bit tricky, so here are a few tips on how to make the transition as seamless as possible.
The first step of this process begins in the Facebook app. Specifically, you need to download all of your photos on your Facebook account to a local file so you can then upload them to Google Photos. Here's the best way to do that.
Scroll down and tap on Settings & Privacy.
Tap Deselect All.
Tap High to get the highest-quality download of your files.
Tap Create File.
With this done, you now have to wait for Facebook to process your download request. This shouldn't take too long, and once your file is ready, you'll get an email letting you know. In this case, I requested the copy at 8:32, and it was ready at 8:37.
Once your file is ready to be downloaded, here's what you do:
Enter your Facebook password and tap Continue
Now, it's time to sit back and wait for your photos to download. Depending on how many you're downloading and how fast your internet connection is, this could take a while. Once it's done downloading, we can move on to the next steps.
Tap photos_and_videos.
Tap Extract.
Once everything is done extracting, it's time to move on to the final few steps.
Tap the three lines at the top-left of the screen.
Tap the Back up & sync toggle.
You'll need to go through and do this for all of the albums you want to back up to Google Photos, and while it is a little tedious, it's the best method we've found for getting everything converted over.
The social network that everyone's on.
Despite seemingly endless privacy/security scandals, Facebook continues to be one of the largest social networks on the planet. You can use it to connect with family, store photos, play games, and even date.
Our favorite way to save precious memories.
In the world of online photo storage, Google Photos reigns supreme. It's 100% free-to-use, has a clean interface, and powerful AI features for helping you group all of your pictures together in the right spots.
Speaking of photos, here are a few of our favorite photo-centric phone accessories to help you take your photography game to the next level!
Whether you're taking family portraits or pictures of the night sky, this tripod and remote shutter bundle gives you enhanced stability and functionality with your shots.
Take your selfies to the next level with this LED light, ensuring you always look your best no matter where you may find yourself.
If you have a phone with a microSD card slot, this 128GB card from Samsung is a great buy. It's reliable, affordable, and has plenty of room for all your photos.
This acquisition is the beginning, not the end, of Google's work on its fitness platform.
Google just splashed a bunch of cash to acquire Fitbit, and right out of the gate it has a lot to say about what the new company will bring and what it means for Google's wearable strategy going forward. The obvious assumption is that this will renew Google's focus on wearables, and fitness wearables in particular.
Buying Fitbit doesn't just magically make Google's wearables competitive in the fitness space. Fitbit was already struggling to differentiate itself in a world dominated by the Apple Watch, much cheaper basic fitness trackers, and dedicated high-end fitness watches — after all, there's a reason why it was for sale in the first place. At its peak in 2015, Fitbit was valued over 10 times what Google just acquired it for.
Fitbit's strength has always been in hardware; making simple, effective wearables that stand up to constant use and have really good battery life. Its reputation, and its incredible brand recognition, is built on this foundation. Where it has constantly fallen flat is in software, particularly when it tried to wade into the world of more fully-featured smartwatches — and that gulf in quality only grew as the Apple Watch got better over the years, and Wear OS even got a lot of polish through its last few updates.
Google isn't going to be able to just take Fitbit's business and quickly transition to all of a sudden making great wearables with an excellent fitness acumen. Fitbit has issues, but it's not worthless — Google just has to take the good parts of Fitbit and get to work on the rest.
Fitbit brings wearable expertise, and years of strong customer mind share and business partnerships.
There are two big things that Google gets with this Fitbit acquisition. The first is a company (and the people in it) that's well-versed in making wearable hardware. Similarly to the acquisition of HTC's smartphone engineers, Google's buying a whole bunch of very smart people who know how to make great wearables — not necessarily just fitness bands or smartwatches. Even with the (frankly tiny) $40 million acquisition of some technology and R&D people from Fossil earlier this year, Google's wearable expertise is seemingly the smallest of any of its hardware divisions — bringing in Fitbit is a massive upgrade.
Perhaps just as importantly, Fitbit also brings Google years of history working in the health and fitness world. Fitbit may have fallen from its once-high perch, but it was in the fitness wearable game from the early days and was one of the biggest factors in the popularity of the category. "Fitbit" is still, for many people, the Kleenex or Coke of the fitness band world — it's ubiquitous in mind share, if no longer market share. Fitbit has a massive group of partners — from fitness companies, apps and services to insurance companies and healthcare providers. That mind share, and those relationships, is incredibly important when you're coming from a position of weakness in the wearable space as Google is.
What this acquisition doesn't give Google is an immediate leg up in the fitness wearable market — and that's mostly due to the fact of how far behind Google is to start. Google Fit is just fine. It is a minimum viable product, and certainly not anyone's first choice for activity, health and wellness tracking. Google Fit has focused primarily where Wear OS has: getting the basics done, and not being particularly outstanding at any given feature. As we've established, Fitbit's software also isn't something to write home about — you can't simply pick it up, put it on Wear OS, and think you have a winner.
Buying Fitbit is the beginning of a big change, not the end.
There have been plenty of "sport" Wear OS watches — but ultimately the form factor is only a small part of the equation. You also need really great fitness tracking software, and just as importantly as you grow, an ecosystem of partner apps and services. Samsung has spent years trying various different fitness wearable form factors and completely revamping its fitness software — it's made strides, and Samsung Health is quite good, but its ecosystem of connected apps and services is still hot garbage. And just like Google Fit, Samsung Health is nobody's first choice for fitness tracking. Despite massive investment and some relative success, Samsung still isn't a leader — and its history is a great view into what's ahead for Google.
Google may not be able to fully realize its vision for wearables post-Fitbit for years to come, but there is value in this acquisition. It just requires a lot of work; buying Fitbit is the beginning of a big change, not the end. Google says that along with this acquisition it will be investing further in Wear OS, and plans to release new wearables soon. It all makes sense, but simply having Fitbit doesn't take away the barriers it was already facing, and failing to get over, up to this point.
Russia's "sovereign internet" law, which President Vladimir Putin signed back in May, has taken effect on November 1st. As the BBC explains, it gives the country's government power to block access to content whether from within or from outside Russia...
While World of Warcraft Classic has been great for a lot of players, the modern version of the MMO is still going strong. At Blizzcon 2019, the team announced it's eighth expansion, Shadowlands, which will follow Battle for Azeroth. After characters...
Yesterday a flurry of leaked photos showed Motorola's upcoming RAZR posed for press pics, but now a picture has surfaced on China's Weibo network claiming to show one in the wild. Sunniton posted this picture saying it was the real thing, showing the...
Renders of an upcoming Huawei tablet have leaked, and they show a device that looks like the iPad Pro with a "hole-punch" front-facing camera design. 91mobiles, which posted the first batch of leaked renders, suggested that it may be MediaPad M6's su...