Google Fit Warms Up

Google Fit has risen as part of a prodigious, two-and-a-half-hour-long I/O keynote that included everything but the kitchen sink (and Google Glass and Google+).

Today during its annual developer conference, Google announced a platform preview of Google Fit, a set of APIs that will allow developers to sync data across wearables and devices.

Google Product Manager Ellie Powers demonstrated Fit’s powers with the weight loss app Noom, which communicated with Powers’ Withings scale in order to keep tabs on her daily cookie habit. Also mentioned during her presentation were Adidas smart sensors and a partnership with Nike Fuel that will make Nike Fuel data available to Google Fit developers.

The dream here is the bundling of user fitness data, with the user’s permission, of course. And Google is not alone in this aspiration, with Apple’s HealthKit platform among the many products aiming to aggregate your health zeros and ones.

As the SDK for the platform will be available in a “couple of weeks,” it’s hard to know how far Google Fit could go once developers get on board. But, along with Withings, Adidas and Nike, Google has already enlisted a formidable group of fitness brand logos for its presentation slide.

Here is the only way I see this playing out well for Google: A separate Google Fit app, like Google Docs or Google Calendar for fitness, that syncs with RunKeeper and your scale, and that you can access on a laptop or even your iPhone. The fitness data market is very closely tied to the wearables market, and neither has gelled yet.

iWatch this space.