Google is losing its Fitbit leaders and laying off hundreds of AR employees

Google’s hardware division just took a body blow. The company has confirmed it’s laying off hundreds of hardware workers, especially in its augmented reality division — and that Fitbit co founders James Park, Eric Friedman, and other Fitbit leaders are leaving the company entirely. Here’s Google’s statement to Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini confirmed the numbers to .

This is likely the end of Fitbit as we know it, just over four years after Google in November 2019. Not that this entirely comes as a surprise. My colleague Victoria Song spent a good portion of last year writing about , but hanging users out to dry by axing beloved features, presiding over multi day outages, and generally pushing people instead of a Fitbit band.

The company even . I’m not going to say we told you so, particularly since the to be a decent device, but... . For its part, Google’s spokesperson says that Fitbit will live on: “We remain very committed to serving our Fitbit users well, innovating in the health space with personal AI, and building on the momentum with Pixel Watch, the redesigned Fitbit app, Fitbit Premium service, and the Fitbit tracker line.

This work will continue to be a key part of our new org model,” Mencini tells Google’s AR efforts have similarly been in question , and the team’s . The company reportedly many months ago. Stephen Lake, co founder of the AR glasses company North , also left Google last June according to his LinkedIn page.

When Google says its “1P AR hardware team” is seeing the majority of impacts, that means it’s chosen to spend fewer dollars on developing its own glasses by itself. , but we’ve yet to see the fruits of those labors and the Samsung partnership was facing setbacks as well. Google didn’t respond to our question about whether it’s no longer working on its own AR hardware, and it didn’t specifically confirm the departure of Fitbit leaders.

Here’s what the company would say: We’ve written about , and the company’s in letting go of tech workers during this winter season. /.