After many decades make war machine and house cleaning toolsiRobot has agreed to be acquired by Amazon for $1.7 billion, according to a Joint statement by two companies. If the deal is successful, it will give Amazon access to another source of personal data: a map of the interior of a Roomba owner’s home.
iRobot has started Build robots for the US military, but 20 years ago added a consumer vacuum cleaner to the mix. (It completely spun off the defense business in 2016.) Those Roombas operate in part by using sensors to map the homes in which they operate. In a 2017 Reuters interviewiRobot CEO Colin Angle hinted that the company might one day share that data with tech companies developing smart home devices and AI assistants.
Amazon declined to answer questions about how it would use that data, but combined with other recent acquisition targets, the company could end up with a comprehensive look at what’s going on inside. in everyone’s house. E-commerce giant acquires video doorbell company Ring the bell in 2018 and Wi-Fi router manufacturers Eero a year later. Speakers and other devices with AI assistants Alexa can now control thousands of smart home devices, including the Roomba vacuum cleaner. And Amazon plans to acquire primary care chain One Medical in an all-cash deal worth $3.49 billion that, if approved, would hold millions of people’s health data.
“People tend to think of Amazon as an online sales company, but really Amazon is a surveillance company. That’s the core of the business model and that’s what drives its monopoly power and profitability,” said Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit digital rights organization Fight for the Future. “Amazon wants to have its hands everywhere, and acquiring a company that is essentially built on mapping the insides of people’s homes seems like a natural extension of its oversight scope. close that Amazon has.”
Amazon has a track record of creating or acquiring technology that worries people who care about data privacy. In 2020, Amazon introduced a home security droneand last month Ring, a company that has forged a partnership with thousands of police and fire departmentsadmitted to sharing home video footage with law enforcement no command. If access is requested by law enforcement or the government, too much data about people in the hands of one company risks becoming a point of failure for democracy and human rights, Greer said.
The company has house robot, Astro, which it introduced last fall. At the time, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of Devices and Services David Limp said the company had launched the robot without a defined use case. In an interview with WIRED in June, Amazon’s vice president of consumer robotics Ken Washington said the initial focus was on home surveillance and security.
Astro is currently available by invitation only. Washington declined to share how many Astros are in people’s homes now or when Astro will be made available. Since its launch, Amazon has pushed an update to Astro that allows people to add rooms to the home map without having to remodel the entire house.
Amazon’s home robots aren’t currently able to coordinate operations across multiple units, but Washington says stair climbing and coordination among Astros across multiple floors are part of the product development roadmap. Instead of hoping that Astro will appeal to a mass audience, the iRobot acquisition will give Amazon an immediate family-mapping presence at scale.
It’s too early to tell, but the deal could face Federal Trade Commission scrutiny. Privacy advocates have voiced their objections, and FTC chair Lina Khan has been deeply critical of the acquisitions of Big Tech companies. The five-member committee consolidated a 3-2 Democratic majority in May. And Khan himself has become noticeably more prominent after one Yale Law Review the article reimagines antitrust law — with Amazon at the center.
Even without putting iRobot to work, there are some aspects of people’s lives that Amazon just doesn’t have access to. It tracked intimate details like what people ate, bought, watched, read and the prescription drugs they consumed. Before long, it could also know every inch of the soil in their house.
