FitBit Co-Founders Leave Google, Devices Division Gets Reorganised

Google is undertaking a major reorganisation of its devices division, which includes the Pixel, Nest, and FitBit hardware. As part of this reorganisation, the FitBit co-founders, James Park and Eric Friedman, are leaving the company. Most recently, James Park announced the Pixel Watch 2 at Google’s 2023 hardware launch.

Google is moving to a functional operating organisation model that mirrors that of Apple. This means there will be one unified team responsible for hardware engineering across Pixel, Nest, and FitBit products. Additionally, there will be a single leader for all hardware across Google — likely to be Rick Osterloh, the Senior Vice President of Devices and Services.

Previously, Pixel, Nest, and FitBit had independent teams that handled aspects of design, hardware engineering, software, and UI. Essentially, Pixel, Nest, and FitBit operated as small companies within Google; now, they have been unified, and their resources have been distributed across design, hardware engineering, software, and UI functions.

Some roles at FitBit had already been integrated within the larger Google team earlier. For example, the FitBit communications team was unified with Google's internal PR team, which says this has been an ongoing process since Google acquired it in 2021.

As part of this unification, there will be a few layoffs at Google, primarily affecting its augmented reality hardware team, as Google is not working on its own AR hardware.

"A few hundred roles are being eliminated in DSPA, with the majority of impacts on the 1P AR Hardware team. While we are making changes to our 1P AR hardware team, Google continues to be deeply committed to other AR initiatives, such as AR experiences in our products and product partnerships,” said Google.