Amazon continues to dig its furrow in home automation. And to improve its offer, the company is not afraid to run the printing press since it has just announced the acquisition of iRobot, the manufacturer of Roomba vacuum cleaners.
Amazon has just announced the fourth largest acquisition in its history. The e-commerce giant revealed on August 5 that it was going to get its hands on iRobot, the maker of Roomba robot vacuum cleaners. The buyout will cost Amazon a whopping $1.7 billion, but comes with plenty of perks.
Amazon completes its home automation offer
“For many years, the iRobot team has proven its ability to reinvent the way of doing housework with incredibly practical and inventive products.” boasts Dave Limp, the head of Amazon products. On the side of iRobot, CEO Colin Angle – who will remain at the helm after the takeover – admits to being “incredibly excited” to integrate Amazon. It must be said that the company is not in its infancy in the field of the connected home.
Amazon has obviously been marketing its Echo connected speakers for years now, but that’s not all. The company is also behind the connected Ring doorbells and even launched a small domestic robot named Astro in 2021. The Roomba robot vacuum cleaners therefore complete the imposing home automation ecosystem built by Amazon. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons for the takeover.
Concerns about personal data
Beyond the Roomba brand image – which popularized the concept of robot vacuum cleaners – iRobot is also the owner of a good deal of personal information about its customers. The constructor’s robots precisely map the interior of the spaces in which they work. From the size of rooms to the location of furniture, Roomba collect a lot of data. A gold mine for Amazon, which has always made its money trying to find out as much as possible about its customers to sell them the products most likely to interest them. With the recently announced iRobot OS, sharing this information with other home automation objects is even easier.
This is one of the problems raised by this acquisition. Amazon doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to protecting personal data. In 2019, 2021 and 2022, Ring connected surveillance cameras and doorbells were at the heart of many controversies for their data sharing policy that was a little too generous with the American authorities. Add to the surveillance images a complete cartography of an apartment, and you obtain a very complete panoptic system.
The other fear raised by this acquisition is obviously the possibility of abuse of a dominant position. By getting its hands on iRobot, Amazon has the opportunity to flood the market with efficient robot vacuums by selling them for far less than the competition — and potentially absorbing the extra cost through the rest of its business. This is also why Amazon ends its press release by specifying that this acquisition “is subject to the approval of the legislative authorities“There is no doubt that such a takeover will sound a few alerts within the European Commission, which is currently watching the affairs of the e-commerce giant very closely.