Google is aiming to keep its users healthy — and away from Apple — with a new app that takes a broader view of fitness tracking.

Google Fit, released Tuesday, will use the sensors in Android phones to track and organize people’s walking, biking and running activity. Users can set goals and check their progress from within the app on their smartphone, as well as on the web, tablets, and Android Wear smartwatches.

Mobile fitness apps are common these days, but Google is trying to add value by enabling Fit to act as a hub for third-party apps like those from Strava, Withings and Runkeeper. Fit users can access data gathered by those apps within the Fit app, instead of having to switch between them. That functionality makes Google Fit the prime competitor to Apple’s HealthKit, a software platform for iOS 8 that lets third-party apps share their data with Apple’s Health app.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

…