Google to acquire Fitbit for $2.1B

Fitbit on Friday announced it will be acquired by Google in a deal that values the smartwatch maker at roughly $2.1 billion.

The deal puts Alphabet in a race against Apple when it comes to tracking fitness and health data. Fitbit’s stock had surged as much as 30% earlier this week on reports that Alphabet had put in an offer. The deal is expected to close in 2020.

Google will pay $7.35 a share for the fitness tracker, helping it advance its ambitions for wearable technology. The company does not make its own smartwatch.

Fitbit stock surged 16% after the announcement. Like comparable products manufactured by Garmin, Apple and Samsung, the Fitbit gives consumers immediate access to ever-more-specific slices of fitness data — from their daily step count to their heart rate to how well they sleep. Yet the data has also become a treasure trove for employers and insurance companies, complicating the relationships between workers and their bosses.

Glass plant plans to lay off 93

Glass container manufacturer Owens-Brockway plans to lay off 93 northeast Portland employees indefinitely, beginning Dec. 30.

The Ohio company notified state employment officials of the pending layoffs in a letter this week. The company said it plans to idle one of the furnaces it uses for glass manufacturing at a facility near Portland International Airport.

Owens-Brockway did not explain why it’s shutting off the furnace and did not immediately respond to an inquiry. The company said it “cannot currently predict when, or if, this furnace will resume operations in the future.”

In the last two weeks alone companies have announced more than 300 pending layoffs at employers including Pacifica Beauty, McAfee and eye-care startup Sightbox.

Tainted romaine sickens 23

Federal food safety authorities dropped a Halloween surprise this week: 23 people in 12 states were sickened by fecal bacteria traced to romaine lettuce between July and early September.

Illnesses occurred between mid-July and early September in California, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, North Carolina, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. No deaths were reported, and 11 people were hospitalized.

The Food and Drug Administration said in a Thursday news release that it did not publicly disclose the E. coli outbreak because suspect produce was no longer available to consumers when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined it was a possible culprit in mid-September.