South Africa: Conditional approval of Google’s proposed acquisition of Fitbit by Competition Commission

On 22 December 2020, the South African Competition Commission conditionally approved the proposed acquisition of Fitbit by Google. The Commission found that the proposed transaction was likely to result in a substantial prevention or lessening of competition, particularly regarding the potential for Google to exclude Fitbit’s competitors in the market for wrist-worn wearable devices, the possibility that Google entrenches its dominance in the online advertising and online search market, and the possibility that Google restricts access to health data collected by Fitbit. Google committed for a period of 10 years to the following conditions: (1) not to discriminate against any Wrist-Worn Wearable Device manufacturers by withholding, denying, or delaying access to the Android functionalities that Google generally makes available to other Android Smartphone App Developers for use with an Android App; (2) not to discriminate between Wrist-Worn Wearable Device manufacturers and other Android Smartphone App Developers in relation to changing, replacing, or retiring Android APIs; (3) not to discriminate between Wrist-Worn Wearable Device manufacturers and other Android Smartphone App Developers in terms of the access it provides to Developer Previews; (4) not to discriminate between Wrist-Worn Wearable Device manufacturers and other Android Smartphone App Developers in terms of the access it provides to Developer Documentation; (5) maintaining data separation between the Fitbit data and Google’s existing data; and (6) allowing third parties that currently access Fitbit’s data to continue to have access to users’ health and fitness data through the Fitbit Web API.