Strava Just Sued Garmin: Demands Garmin Stop Selling Devices
dcrainmaker.com> But what I can tell you is that if I were someone on Wall Street looking at this situation, I’d be doing a solid double-take of Strava’s leadership right now. You’ve just poked a bear that virtually never loses patent disputes, and done so by picking a patent that’s likely to get nullified, while concurrently being upset about something that happened 10 years ago. All while running the risk of Garmin simply saying “No problem, let’s turn off the API from Garmin to Strava”. Instantly, you’re hemorrhaging paid Strava users. For what reason? Just because you don’t want to put tiny source/attribution text on a display page somewhere?
This seems right to me - why, when moving to your IPO, would you do this?
Hilarious.
Strava literally only exists because of Garmin [and Apple, others] data. They offer no value, contribute nothing, and pretty much just monetize the fact that Apple and Garmin haven't shared data directly between their platforms. They only exist, because they exist, and their userbase has "chosen" them as the social standard.
And lets be honest, they suck for anything that isn't cycling. Garmin and Apple recognize that the vast majority the users are casual hybrid athletes.
As such, doing anything to jeopardize their position as the "neutral ground" in the non-data-sharing war between Garmin and Apple is pretty stupid. And besides, vibe-coding a Strava replacement would take like all of 7 days.
The funniest bit is Strava suing Garmin for breaking its patent for heat-maps when, as Ray points out, Garmin had heat-maps 6 months before Strava filed for their patent.
Agree, and it's not like Strava invented the heat-map visualization anyway, tons of prior art.
Garmin needs to hire some good anti-Patent troll lawyers and go full NewEgg on them: full scorched earth policy.
I don’t care much for social features but they were more compelling when I first used the app and the user base was smaller.
The user base now is using Strava as the standard platform for data. Someone else pointed this out too. It is the place I look/visit to see nearly all of my physical activities in one spot. Works across different brands/devices/etc.
Garmin’s platform isn’t much more appealing as an end user. Apple’s makes me insane. Strava just kind of works even though I can’t stand the constant mobile push/CTA to pay.
I don’t and won’t.
> Strava literally only exists because of Garmin [and Apple, others] data.
Largely true.
> They offer no value, contribute nothing, and pretty much just monetize the fact that Apple and Garmin haven't shared data directly between their platforms.
Massively overstated. Strava adds a ton of value for serious users.
Strava is a social network, and its user base is its added value.
If I want training data, I'd be better off with TrainingPeak or Intervals.icu.
Strava has been stagnating in terms of features for athletes for years. They are just starting to roll out a report on hours spent per week in different power or heart rate zones, for example.
The latest features are either designed for posting stories on Instagram or are gimmicks like AI that interprets the results of a workout in natural language and gets it wrong half the time without ever saying anything interesting.
Strava's second function is to serve as a data hub when using multiple devices from different brands.This point is also relatively overlooked, and duplicate synchronisations and incorrect reports are quite common.
Meanwhile, Strava focuses solely on segments and rankings. They are extremely aggressive with anything that could resemble a ranking or one of their paid features. Even when it's a small personal project that doesn't generate a penny.
That Kudos button :)
I won't comment on the validity of patents or legal stuff because I don't know. But Strava is playing a very dangerous game here with their user base. I would hazard that a very large segment of their users are far more enthusiastic about Garmin than they are about Strava itself. Do you really want to anger your own users?
Even if Strava wins, they lose.
Interestingly a Strava higher up posted their point of view on a Strava Reddit, which was met with a lot of ridicule from Strava users there.
They claim that your sports data is yours, and have issue with Garmin requiring their logo or a snippet of text on each activity that came from Garmin. A few users recounted that Strava screwed over their own API developers the other year and tried to do something with their activity data themselves (selling it off or something).
If the lawsuit leads to some sort of meaningful action and users are given the choice of Garmin or Strava, obviously they're going to stick with the hardware they have bought and own, above an app that relies on the former.
All of the features Strava claims breached their patent were in Garmin before Strava patented them.
I think Strava just doesn't know where to go from here. They already have a complete product, which they keep tacking gimmicks onto (Athlete Intelligence), and which probably already has the most users it's going to have. Now it just has to squeeze them endlessly for more money through higher subscription fees and ads (like the ads they masquerade as challenges).
The reddit post is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Strava/s/CzTIGS3RI3
As a reminder, we are on a subreddit called ‘r/strava’ made up of loyal users. The story about user data is that in 2024, Strava changed its terms of service and API guide. They decreed that the data belonged to them because they had processed and collected it. They also declared that they had the right to disconnect and kill any projects that vaguely competed with an existing Strava feature, such as ‘displaying public statistics’. The backlash was significant.
Example https://www.trailforks.com/blog/view/changes-to-strava-activ...
You have to be a real hypocrite after all that to try to elicit sympathy and claim to be a defender of users and their data.
As a very avid runner. The only reason I have Strava is because others have Strava. It is totally interchangeable with whatever someone comes up with next.
But my Garmin? that's a very expensive hardware choice that you have zero ability to change. And I wouldn't be the only one here.
Suunto, Coros and Polar just don't compare. Garmin has really tried pushing a few features into its Fenix line that long distance runners like myself don't care about.. and Coros have been very aggressive with trying to lure us to them.
But once again... It's a very expensive hardware choice that I make once every 5-10 years.
It would be if a social media app decided to stop making an app on either iPhone or Android.
People won't just swap hardware to use software. We would swap software.
The CPO of Strava went over to Reddit to “set the record straight” and just wow.
I love Garmin and Strava. But all good things come to and end. It disappointingly fits the familar pattern.
Innovative product --> popular, profitable --> greed prevails --> product declines --> alternatives emerge --> community fractures
I really hate Strava. Strava (and anything that replaces it in the same function) exists as a pointless social media layer on top of what Garmin/Suunto/Polar provide.
There is really no reason to use it, and I've seen so many new runners come and go, because they treat Strava the same way people treat social media in general. They see others doing high mileage, and hard intervals, they try to emulate it (from many people) and they end up with stress injuries or burn out.
There's no guidance, and it shows you a display of performances from people of all sorts of ability (I see two literal Olympians on my regular run route) who took time to get where they are. Newcomers can see that and try to emulate it too quickly and injure themselves. There's no warning for somebody going from 10k a week straight to 30k the next week, 40 the week after, 50, so on. But any runner would tell you to follow a 10% rule. Strava doesn't even give a warning.
My local running route is plagued with cyclists causing disturbances and near-misses for the sake of Strava segments (small parts of routes with leaderboards), despite being pedestrian priority.
I just can't think of anything Strava offers besides the utility to like somebody's bike ride or run, which is probably something you could already do elsewhere. It trims tons of the data that Garmin provides, puts up leaderboards (apps with leaderboards almost always incentivise the wrong method of doing something), and they promote competition to people brand new to running, usually in the guise of runners who have built up properly over a longer timespan.
Strava heatmaps are great for finding surf breaks and illegal MTB trails
> I really hate Strava. Strava (and anything that replaces it in the same function) exists as a pointless social media layer on top of what Garmin/Suunto/Polar provide.
>There is really no reason to use it
I use it for the exact reason that you seem to hate it.
To each their own.
I can see the purpose of a unified platform for Garmin, Suunto, Coros and Polar, because it's unlikely the brands will ever include one another in their own respective apps.
I just hate social media-isms like Kudos, leaderboards (my old run club leaderboard would see you doing upwards of 150km of weekly mileage to beat the likes of Phil Sessemann), and the shift in cyclist behaviour caused by segments on local (narrow) mixed-use routes.
It gives the vibe of tons of SV apps, where they don't consider what impact their real world linked apps can have. When it becomes time to face responsibility they go back to just being an app and how they incentivise people to behave is no longer their issue. Their greatest claim to fame of a feature turns many places more hostile.