Google Launches the $100 Fitbit Air and Renames Fitbit as Google Health

Google has done two things this week that signal a decisive shift in its consumer health ambitions: it launched its first screenless fitness band, and it formally retired the Fitbit brand.

“Retired” is the more precise word. Starting May 19, the Fitbit app that has lived on hundreds of millions of Android and iOS devices will be renamed the Google Health app. The pivot is more than cosmetic. It marks the formal completion of a transformation that began when Google acquired Fitbit in 2021 for $2.1 billion and has been gradually absorbing the brand into its broader ecosystem ever since.

The hardware announcement is more immediately tangible. The Fitbit Air, Google’s first screenless fitness wearable, goes on sale May 26 for $99.99. It is designed to compete directly with Whoop, the subscription-based screenless fitness band that has built a devoted following among endurance athletes and biohackers, and indirectly with Oura Ring and the broader movement toward passive, data-dense health monitoring with minimal on-body interface.

What the Fitbit Air Actually Is

The Fitbit Air ships as a pebble-shaped sensing core that snaps in and out of interchangeable bands. The modular design is a direct response to user feedback on previous Fitbit products: the hardware is the sensor platform, while aesthetics are a separate, swappable choice. A standard silicone band ships in the box; additional colors and materials will be available separately at launch.

The sensor array mirrors what users have come to expect from premium fitness wearables: continuous heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) tracking, sleep stage detection, skin temperature sensing, and automated activity recognition. Without a screen, all data must be accessed through the Google Health app on a paired smartphone. This is the same fundamental trade-off Whoop users have accepted for years: by eliminating the display, the device becomes lighter, smaller, simpler to waterproof, and dramatically more battery-efficient. Google has not yet published official battery life figures, but devices of this type and size from competitors typically achieve four to seven days on a charge.

A Stephen Curry signature edition launches alongside the standard Fitbit Air, a partnership Google is using to position the device in the fitness performance market rather than the mainstream wellness category that older Fitbit products occupied. The NBA star’s involvement follows a pattern of major tech health wearable launches pairing with high-profile athlete endorsements to signal performance credibility over casual use.

The App Rebrand: Fitbit Becomes Google Health

The software announcement carries more long-term significance. Starting May 19, the Fitbit app will become the Google Health app. Fitbit Premium, the subscription tier that unlocks advanced analytics and coaching, simultaneously becomes Google Health Premium.

The new Google Health app is architecturally different from its predecessor. Rather than functioning as a walled data garden for Fitbit devices, it is designed as a health data integration hub. Google Health aggregates data from Fitbit hardware, from the Google Health Connect platform (which pulls data from compatible third-party Android fitness apps), from Apple Health on iOS devices, and from users’ medical records when they choose to link them through supported healthcare providers.

The consolidation matters because data fragmentation has long been one of personal health technology’s most persistent problems. A user might track sleep with an Oura Ring, running with a Garmin, weight with a smart scale, and nutrition with a dedicated app — and have no unified view of how those variables interact. Google Health is positioning itself as the aggregation layer that reveals those connections, with Gemini AI as the reasoning engine that interprets the combined dataset.

Google Health Coach: Gemini as Your Personal Trainer

The centerpiece of Google Health Premium is Google Health Coach, the Gemini-powered AI coaching system that entered public preview in October 2025. Starting May 19, all Google Health Premium subscribers gain full access.

Health Coach analyzes the longitudinal data flowing through Google Health — sleep trends, activity patterns, heart rate variability, recovery metrics, and user-reported context like stress levels and nutrition — and generates personalized coaching recommendations. Unlike older rule-based systems that might simply tell a user to sleep more when duration drops, Health Coach is built to surface more nuanced correlations: the relationship between Sunday evening screen exposure and Monday sleep quality, for instance, or how altitude changes during travel affect resting heart rate and optimal workout intensity.

What Google Health Coach deliberately does not do is diagnose medical conditions or position itself as a replacement for clinical care. The system is calibrated to the wellness and performance space, with explicit guardrails preventing clinical-grade diagnostic language. This design choice keeps it in a different regulatory category from software-as-a-medical-device products that require FDA clearance in the United States, consistent with how Apple and Samsung have each navigated the wellness-versus-clinical boundary in their own AI health offerings.

The Competitive Picture

Google’s timing is deliberate. The smart wearables market has been consolidating around a handful of established players — Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy Watch, Garmin, Oura Ring, and Whoop — while the mass-market Fitbit customer has been increasingly underserved as the product line stagnated post-acquisition. Fitbit Air at $99 with no subscription required for core features gives Google a competitive entry price, while Google Health Premium targets the more engaged user who wants AI-powered personalized coaching.

Apple’s response will be closely watched. Apple Watch holds a dominant position in the premium smartwatch segment, and Apple Health has its own vast installed data network. But Apple has not yet deployed a Gemini-caliber AI coaching system across Apple Health in a way that directly mirrors Google’s offering. WWDC 2026 in June is expected to include significant health-focused announcements that could sharpen that competition materially.

For the health tech ecosystem more broadly, Google’s move validates the bet that the next major battleground in wearables is not the hardware itself — sensors have largely commoditized — but the AI layer that turns raw biometric data into meaningful, personalized guidance. That is a battle that runs on data volume, model quality, and user trust. Google has all three ingredients, though the Fitbit brand’s journey from independent pioneer to Google product line reflects the difficulties of sustaining consumer trust through a prolonged acquisition transition.

For Fitbit loyalists who have watched the brand’s slow absorption since 2021, this week’s announcements deliver clarity: the Fitbit name is retiring, but the platform is not going away. It is being elevated and integrated into Google’s largest AI ambitions. Whether that trajectory serves users better than Fitbit’s independent path might have is a question for history. For now, the Fitbit Air and Google Health app represent the clearest articulation yet of what Google’s consumer health strategy actually looks like — and Google I/O 2026, which opens on the same day the rebrand takes effect, will likely add considerably more detail.