I asked Google about its new multi-year partnership with Flo Health, in light of privacy concerns

In Google's most recent closed press briefing, in which Google's top brass revealed the new Fitbit Edge fitness tracker to a video call full of international journalists, it also revealed Google was entering into a "multi-year partnership" with an app called Flo.

Flo is a women's health app that can track your period, ovulation windows, and pregnancy stages, and it's widely used across the world.

Google said the new partnership was going to involve creating "personalized experiences for women".

This includes building new products, and incorporating Flo into the AI-forward Google Health app.

Google says it's "working hard to sync Google Health with Flo for deeper insights", using trackers such as the Fitbit Air to collect data and Google Health to organize and surface that data, possibly with the AI chatbot Google Health Coach premium service.

During the presentation, Google stated that "Flo has spent more than a decade earning the trust of women".

But a high-profile lawsuit against Google and Flo — and Google’s fellow big tech giant Meta — ended with Google and Flo paying a settlement of $56 million.

What happened? In a consolidated lawsuit against defendants Flo, Google and Meta, representatives of Flo app users between 2016 and 2019 alleged that sensitive period tracking information was shared by Flo to Google and Meta without their knowledge or consent, through Flo's in-app software development kits.

According to Reuters , Google and Flo chose to settle out of court to the tune of $56 million combined, with an addition $3.5 million from a now-defunct mobile company Flurry.

Meta, which chose not to settle, was found liable for having 'violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act' according to court documents , and its attempts to overturn the motions were denied.

Google's new stance (Image credit: Google / Flo) It's big tech's MO to collect an enormous amount of information from across the web, but sometimes we don't quite realize the extent or personal nature of the information these companies collect.

I asked Google the following: "The announcement of the multi-year partnership between Google Health and Flo comes after the high-profile $56 million class-action settlement by Flo and Google.

Meta chose not to settle, and was found liable.