I tracked everything on Fitbit for years — Gemini is finally making it useful

This is less about one app feature and more about Google converting a passive data asset into a retention engine. The real economic value is not the coach itself, but the reduction in churn for Pixel Watch/Fitbit users once the product starts generating habit-forming, daily utility; that supports higher attach rates for Premium and lowers the odds that users migrate to Apple’s integrated ecosystem. If the AI coach meaningfully improves perceived health outcomes, Google gains a wedge in a market where hardware differentiation is thin and software lock-in is the margin driver.

The second-order effect is competitive pressure on Apple, not in hardware but in perceived intelligence of the health stack. Apple still has the advantage in closed-loop integration, but Google can leverage Gemini to make commodity sensor data feel bespoke faster than Apple can build a fully conversational coaching layer. That matters because wearables are increasingly a services game: if the AI layer improves engagement metrics, it can increase subscription monetization without requiring a major hardware refresh cycle.

The main risk is feature fatigue. If the coach becomes noisy or low-trust, users will mute notifications within weeks, capping engagement and making this another underused premium feature rather than a retention catalyst. The market should also distinguish between preview enthusiasm and durable behavior change; the former can move sentiment in days, while the latter takes multiple quarterly cohorts to prove out.

Contrarian take: this may be more important for Google’s health data strategy than for immediate Pixel Watch sales. The consensus will likely overemphasize consumer-facing delight, but the bigger upside is the data flywheel—more engagement yields more labeled behavioral data, which improves the model and raises switching costs. That creates a multi-year optionality layer for Google across consumer health, insurance partnerships, and potentially enterprise wellness distribution.