58 ms·

Amazon to acquire maker of Roomba vacuum for roughly $1.7B

482 points by mrkramer 4y ago

alphabetting 4y ago
FTC just blocked FB from buying a VR app. Will be interesting to see if this gets through. Very little roomba to maneuver in this regulatory environment. I'll see myself out.
- mrkramer 4y ago
  - morelisp 4y ago
    Why is she wrong?
    - mrkramer 4y ago
      Because she thinks she can predict the future in a way that she believes she knows what is the best for the market in the long term.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        That sounds like a criticism of economists, not lawyers.
        mrkramer 4y ago
        If you are a neoliberal economist that's not bad criticism because less government intervention the better for the market.
      - morelisp 4y ago
        To be clear, this is an incredibly non-specific (neither her nor the merger in question) criticism, so you are proposing that no merger should ever be blocked for any reason?
        mrkramer 4y ago
        Scrutinize big mergers don't block smaller acquisitions because you think you know that sometime in the future the smaller company will become big healthy competitor.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        That's not what they think they know. They think they know Facebook has the financial resources to buy out anyone with even a slight chance of becoming a competitor, and are leveraging that in an anti-competitive fashion.
        mrkramer 4y ago
        >They think they know Facebook has the financial resources to buy out anyone with even a slight chance of becoming a competitor, and are leveraging that in an anti-competitive fashion. Ofc they know it; Facebook/Meta is a public company with a huge cash pile and the pressure from investors to spend that cash is only increasing. They already spend billions for R&D just like their tech peers and the best way to spend the rest of the cash is apparently acquisitions.
      - AlexandrB 4y ago
        That's what VCs do every day by picking winners and losers. Companies like Uber would not have made it (and still might not make it) without massive cash injections. In practice, how is VCs choosing winners different than the FTC doing so?
        mrkramer 4y ago
        VCs are private companies which invest and manage private money and they are not regulating anything. FTC is a government entity which is required by law to regulate markets. That is my layman understanding. And there are hundreds of VCs so if one VC does not believe in your mission and vision find another one but there is only one FTC.
    - nindalf 4y ago
      I'm not the other person, but in my view it's impossible to evaluate the full impact of an acquisition. What you need to do is envision futures where the acquisition does and doesn't take place. And then you have to be satisfied that in both futures, the market and customers suffer no injury. And then you have to justify that decision 10 years later to people who have the benefit of hindsight. It's in vogue to criticise the FTC approval of the Instagram merger, for instance. The critics almost take it for granted that Instagram was going to grow by 100x over the next decade no matter what Facebook did. And that the FTC should have known this very obvious fact and blocked the merger. And then this criticism-with-hindsight is used to criticise all past and future tech acquisitions.
    - pavlov 4y ago
      Blocking the Meta Within acquisition is a worrying precedent because the app in question has a miniscule user base. VR just isn't that popular. I'm guessing they probably have 100k paying users, at most. How can ownership of a product with 100,000 users (globally!) in a country of 330 million people become an antitrust question? FTC leadership's theory seems to be that VR could eventually become a giant market, and if it does, Meta might one day have a position that raises antitrust concerns. But all this is clearly many years, even decades away. By the same logic, they can block any forward-looking small acquisition by any large technology company. And that ought to be a problem for the HN crowd because getting acquired by big tech is one of the primary exits available to interesting startups.
      - morelisp 4y ago
        > getting acquired by big tech is one of the primary exits available to interesting startups. Right, but the claim wasn't that it was bad for the capitalist class, and neither is protecting their personal interests the office's remit. Letting trusts happen is always good for someone, that's not a reason to allow them.
        pavlov 4y ago
        The startup ecosystem is one of USA's greatest economical strengths. Pragmatically, it's just completely puzzling to me what FTC intends to achieve here. Do they want less startups and less speculative R&D investment in America? Because it seems like a bad idea for FTC to create these new arbitrary rules that will chill investment in startups, and the only purpose is to punish a corporation whose founder has been spending $10 billion annually on R&D in VR with no profits in sight. Why not let Zuck spend on VR? Most of that money actually flows back into the US economy. Meta becoming a boring dividend-paying corporation would be enriching the capitalist class far worse.
        AlexandrB 4y ago
        Startups that exit into an acquisition by FAANG generally end up abandoning their products and hurting their customers. As someone who has been burned by this, I'd like to see this exit strategy become less common.
  - rafram 4y ago
    That seems like a pretty arbitrary benchmark. (And I feel like you haven’t met too many econ grads if you think an econ degree is an instant ticket to knowing what you’re doing.)
- snarf21 4y ago
  We can only hope. The FTC and SEC have been largely absent in the 21st century. We need the CPC to start taking priority over stock price and the market.
- __derek__ 4y ago
  > FTC just blocked FB from buying a VR app. No, the FTC filed a lawsuit to attempt to stop the deal, despite the fact that FTC staff recommended against it.[1] The suit is a political sideshow. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-29/ftc-s-khan-overruled-staff-to-sue-meta-over-virtual-reality-deal https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-29/ftc-s-kha...
andiareso 4y ago
Please NO! I don't want to have to get rid of my Roombas! I just bought a new one.
mrkramer 4y ago
Also covered here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/amazon-is-buying-irobot-for-1-7b/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/amazon-is-buying-irobot-fo... https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/5/23293349/amazon-acquires-irobot-roomba-robot-vacuums https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/5/23293349/amazon-acquires-i...
bhouston 4y ago
Interesting. I do love my Roomba. I think they are very popular. I guess this will improve the Alexa integration. Other home robots on the way I suspect?
uptown 4y ago
Ring for the cameras outside your house. Roomba for the cameras rolling around the inside of your house.
cainxinth 4y ago
Not a huge number for this day and age. Household cleaning robots must be a low margin business.
- dtagames 4y ago
  For a device manufacturer? It seems like a pretty huge number to me. And for what these things sell for, pretty high margin, too.
jitl 4y ago
Roomba / iRobot is years behind the Chinese companies. We just got an Ecovacs X1 Omni - a mopping vacuum bot with actual rotating mop scrubbers, AI vision obstacle avoidance, LIDAR mapping, and most importantly fully automated water fill & mop pad cleaning at the base station. We fill a clean water tank & empty the dirty one about once a week. Floors are spotless - huge difference from static cloth mopping bots. Meanwhile, iRobot still hadn’t figured out how to make an effective stand-alone mop bot, much less an auto fill station or combined bot that actually works. Roborock and Ecovacs products launch in China 6-12 months before their US launch. By the time Roomba has a decent mop bot, the X2 or X3 will probably be out offering integration with home plumbing to avoid any manual intervention for months at a time. EDIT: commenters are asking what works offline from Roborock / Ecovacs. For the self-cleaning-mop generation like the X1 Omni: - Roborock obstacle avoidance is local, but works better with cloud. - Roborock can be controlled by a local home automation server without internet access. - Ecovacs obstacle avoidance requires cloud. - Ecovacs control requires cloud. I remembered these stats from a Youtube video that I can't find; probably in my partner's history since we watched reviews on the TV together. I picked the X1 Omni over the Roborock because it has superior mopping performance on tile floors, but I think both would be good options. It seems like Roborock is more privacy compatible.
- martincmartin 4y ago
  Doesn't iRobot make more from military contracts than consumer facing?
  - braingenious 4y ago
    It looks like they sold their military business in 2016.
- bearjaws 4y ago
  Yeah I went from a Roomba 960 (2018) to a Xiaomi Roborock S7 and in my research it was eye opening to see the level of tech difference between the two, even the modern Roomba is using a vision only model, and poorly based on reviews. For the same price, Roborock has Lidar scanning, AI obstacle avoidance and mopping. The thing is, it actually works in the Roborock, it can even spot cords and other misc items around my house and avoid them entirely. Additionally since it maps using Lidar it completes a complete cleaning of my living room + kitchen area in 22 minutes, whole house in under 40 minutes. That is with it covering literally every square inch of carpet & tile instead of going around in random patterns...
nerdjon 4y ago
On the one hand I am excited about this, on the other hand I am worried. With Amazon's issues around Ring I am worried about the privacy side of this. So how they handle that will remain to be seen. But I also see iRobot struggling with the innovation aspect on the home side of things. Especially when it comes to the quality and price point of their robots compared to the competition. If amazon takes some of their more price conscious approach to iRobot (or more justified the cost compared to competition) I think that would be great. Personally I went with iRobot for my last vacuum after constant struggles with lidar robots just being ineffective for home. They can't handle things moving around like they do at home. But I can't ignore that as a vacuum it is not as good as what I had before and cost twice as much.
pull_my_finger 4y ago
I wonder if Amazon actually cares about cleaning robots, or if they're after the data roomba collects? https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/28/16055590/roomba-wont-sell-data-irobot https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/28/16055590/roomba-wont-sell...
- agilob 4y ago
  Schema of your property, number of people living there and times where no one is at home is definitely useful for amazon.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    And for burglars.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
      I assume you're talking about the kind with a badge. Normal criminals don't get access to Amazon's info before entering a house.
      - alistairSH 4y ago
        Maybe I'm just paranoid, but it's only a matter of time until Amazon's data is leaked and sold on the black market. Correlate house layout, number of residents and their schedules, plus income bracket (from another source, possibly also from Amazon), and it's a blueprint for burglars looking for an easy score in an upper-middle class neighborhood.
        darkwater 4y ago
        Your take reminds me of https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
        4y ago
prepend 4y ago
I just bought a roomba and was happy that they weren’t owned by Google or Amazon. This is unfortunate. I owned nests before Google bought them and it was sad to both see their innovation decline (basically the same now as 8 years ago) and usability decline (forcing Google logins).
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  Time to do what I did to every hardware product I owned which Google acquired: Rip it out, delete my account, and try to make my money back selling it to someone else. I actually made a profit on both my Nest and my Fitbit so far! Though the Nest was from energy rebates before I resold it, and the Fitbit was from it's recall for burn risk... Recall paid MSRP, not the price I purchased it for.
- andrew_ 4y ago
  I have two Nest-E devices in the home and have not enabled Google login. If you can find the older versions of the thermostats, you can factory reset them, stick them on a guest network without internal access, and never use the Google login, just the old Nest login. Not sure how long that'll stay like that, but it's doable at present.
  - prepend 4y ago
    I haven’t enabled Google login either but I get nagware from nest and Google asking me to. I really like my nest and hope I can keep them for a long time.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  I’m normally skewering how Google manages their physical products, but Tbf Nest declined due to mismanagement by Tony Fadel, one of the founders. Google gave Nest tons of money which didn’t lead to anything major materializing instead of delay after delay.
  - prepend 4y ago
    Fadell left Nest in 2016. Maybe the early stagnation can be blamed on him. But Google has had the reigns for 6 years and nest has really not done anything substantial.
tehwebguy 4y ago
Is 1X revenue good?
- rexreed 4y ago
  Depends which direction that revenue is going. Anyways multiples of profit is a better measure if the business is making money. After all you could have a multi-billion dollar company tomorrow selling gas for $1/gallon. but you'd also be losing $3-4 for every $1 you make. A pretty good analogy for many tech companies.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  No. It is a sign that profits and profit margins are low and not expected to grow much anytime soon. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IRBT/irobot/net-profit-margin https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IRBT/irobot/net-pr... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IRBT/irobot/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IRBT/irobot/net-in...
crmd 4y ago
The police will soon appreciate access to an interior diagram of your house and the number of people inside, along with the exterior Ring camera video feeds. For public safety of course.
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  Satellite overhead imagery + actual windows would give the cops enough to go on. Oh, and all the plans that are in the town hall. And my lawyer has a copy. A stakeout would give the number of people inside, as well as cellphone data a la stingray.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Yeah, but a roomba can debunk an alibi from last tuesday, and (as a bonus for prosecutors) probably isn’t great at avoiding mistaken identities.
- erinnh 4y ago
  Roomba vSLAM = camera in robots. No idea if they have filters (to blur out details) on the Roomba robots or not.
patwolf 4y ago
I've always wondered how iRobot hasn't been more successful. They have a cool name, brand recognition, first-mover advantage. It's been nearly 20 years since their IPO. I would have expected by now that robots would have taken over more household cleaning tasks, but it doesn't seem like the technology has improved much in the past two decades. I gave up on my roomba because it would always get stuck in something before it could finish cleaning. I now use a Dyson stick vac.
- soco 4y ago
  Maybe they were so successful that some MBA decided to maximize shareholder value by cutting on superfluous R&D?
  - _ea1k 4y ago
    That seems to be the Neato story right now.
- criley2 4y ago
  The technology has come a long way in these years and the modern models are pretty good devices. I use a Miele canister vac for the deep cleans but I also have a Eufy and a Roborock robot vaccum, one does the random bouncing and the other uses LIDAR to map and clean intentionally, and they're both great. I run them several times a week and the amount of stuff they pull out of the carpet, rugs and off the hard floors is incredible. I would never bust out the Miele several times a week.
- pelorat 4y ago
  They lost because the competition is better. Roborock and Ecovacs are superior devices to any of iRobots' offerings.
- theplumber 4y ago
  Their robots started to suck after a while ! They are more interested in extracting more from their customers than creating better robots. Best example is their mopping robot that they try to market using a kind of "subscription" model with proprietary pads. The chinese roborock is so much better and they get better after each release.
zahma 4y ago
Is Amazon in the position where they have so much cash on hand that the most promising short-term growth strategy is for them to aggressively buy new companies? It seems like this is a model of growth for over-expansion —- or world domination along the lines of tech-campus states in Oryx and Crake. They have their fingers in so many pies and realms of data that it seems like they are quickly becoming hegemonic data holders. They’re already expanding into healthcare, which chills me to my bone, beyond that they’ve basically covered every facet of the typical Westerner’s existence with no sign of stopping. It’s high time for anti-trust laws on data, including the sharing and mass aggregation of data through and by intermediates.
lettergram 4y ago
Well … time to get rid of my roomba. The idea that they’ll have ring outside, a camera inside monitoring every movement is kinda nuts, and Alexa monitoring all audio is insane. We already know Amazon has a service to sell data to police. I don’t know what people will expect here.
- danjoredd 4y ago
  We elect our true leaders with each of our purchases, and our ballot is every receipt we get
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  It's interesting because I would totally go for that if I could run all of the services locally with some digital assistant AI to tie it together and manage them. It's tragic, really. The cool future I imagined is here but there is a catch. There's always a catch.
- firstSpeaker 4y ago
  Could you elaborate more on "We already know Amazon has a service to sell data to police" statement?
  - belval 4y ago
    It's plain not true, Amazon has shared information with the police, but they don't make money from it. It's also not large-scale with only 11 requests in 2022. There are plenty of reasons to dislike Amazon, no need to invent one: > Ring says it will only "respond immediately to urgent law enforcement requests for information in cases involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person." Its policy is to review any requests for assistance from police, then make "a good-faith determination whether the request meets the well-known standard, grounded in federal law, that there is imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requiring disclosure of information without delay." https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/07/amazon-finally-admits-giving-cops-ring-doorbell-data-without-user-consent/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/07/amazon-finally-a...
KingOfCoders 4y ago
When Vorwerk bought Neato, products went downhill. I hope - and assume with Amazons tech understanding - this is not the case here (Here Xiaomi has replaced most appliances, e.g. air purifiers etc. and will be our next robot too).
roland35 4y ago
I have heard from a former irobot employee that they were besieged by the same issues I had while working in consumer robotics: endless priority changes and lack of long term product vision. This is why their lawn mower robot apparently failed to launch I feel like if a company just focused on the basics (ie reliable cleaning) instead of a bunch of different marketing gimmicks, it will work out long term.
- gbba 4y ago
  > focus on the basics instead of marketing gimmicks This reminds me of what Steve Jobs said about Xerox[0]. After achieving market leadership in their industry, engineering at iRobot seems to have been pushed aside in the company's decision making process. Is this a consequence of being a publicly traded company? After all, pushing consumables and subscription services requires less capital and makes more money compared to developing a better robot. The $1.7B exit seems like a good outcome for a stagnant (relative to its peers) company. [0] https://youtu.be/NlBjNmXvqIM?t=56 https://youtu.be/NlBjNmXvqIM?t=56
  - roland35 4y ago
    I ran into this issue even in a private company. Hardware takes a long time, and I think leadership doesn't realize how hard it actually is do get the basic functionality done RELIABLY. That is - having a demo of a working lawn mower / vacuum cleaner / whatever is fairly easy (I've seen Arduino based projects online), but having it work in variety of settings and conditions without user intervention for years takes a very long time to work out the bugs. I think over time leadership gets frustrated with seemingly lack of progress on the foundation, while efforts to change the high level features (app, smart home integration, GPS, etc) distract from the core product. Just my 2c
syntaxing 4y ago
I mean not trying to start a flame war, but everyone is praising how great roborock is but the reality is, most of Xiaomi/Roborock technology is stolen/reversed engineered from Neato. Chinese robot vacuum would not even be close to their current capabilities if it wasn’t for the LiDAR on the XV11. If you look at the tear down from the first couple gen, the PCB and components were exactly the same compared to Neatos. (I owned both Neato and Roborock vacuums).
- blocked_again 4y ago
  Why does it matter? In grand scheme of things there are now more people who have access to cheaper and efficent cleaning systems. All companies are reverse engineering the Universe anyway. It's not like you build these technologies out of thin air.
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    Why does it matter in the grand scheme of things to point out stolen tech?
  - jker 4y ago
    Please spend the next year doing a bunch of free engineering and design work for me, thanks in advance.
    - blocked_again 4y ago
      The companies knew that copyright infringement is a possibility when developing the tech. They knew the reward was still worth it despite of that. I am not getting anything designing work for you. On the other hand I can launch my own side projects. I know that if they are any good people are going to copy and start rip offs. I am willing to take that risk.
  - knodi123 4y ago
    Why does large-scale corporate IP theft matter? Well, for one thing, I can't imagine the next Neato being willing to invest in all that R&D if a chinese company is going to rip it off and sell it for peanuts, just so the internet can say "wow, this chinese product is amazing, and I don't know why corporate IP theft matters!"
xsgb 4y ago
I already wonder how people does accept alexa, google home, smart fridges, smart TV and smartphones overloaded with trackers. Now bots full of cameras and obviously connected to internet are coming.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  Convenience. It’s the same reason many people will pick safety over freedom. I’m not making a judgement. It’s just an observation.
  - xsgb 4y ago
    I see it more like the consumerism culture alimented with strong marketing that convince people there's something to gain while occluding any downsides: any individual or collective loss. Like the loss of privacy or the pollution caused by a gadget industry relying on batteries, plastics, consumed power put together, [...].
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      You wouldn’t understand until you’ve used one on a daily basis. The marketing can only do so much if the products don’t actually deliver. They deliver
  - rurp 4y ago
    Marketing is a huge part of it as well. There are a lot of slick online and physical ads for these products. Heck, most of these devices were created by ad companies.
heurisko 4y ago
I expect this is to gain patents/technology around making autonomous robots, so that Amazon can create a warehouse system similar to Ocado, where robots, rather than people, pick groceries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKrcpa8Z_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKrcpa8Z_E
- quantumduck 4y ago
  And what makes you think Amazon doesn't do that yet? Kiva systems did what Ocado does now a DECADE go. Amazon acquired kiva systems (infact, Amazon robotics was born out of this acquisition) long long ago and I'm sure can do a lot more than Ocado does now.
  - heurisko 4y ago
    > And what makes you think Amazon doesn't do that yet? Because I still see a lot of human beings employed picking things in Amazon warehouses.
millerm 4y ago
I expect the Amazon version to require wi-fi or cellular, will have microphones and cameras for “Alexa support”, and will automatically submit the stream to the police of what the Amazon operatives, sorry “operators”, deem sketchy. Remember kids if you live in a state where “it” is not legal, don’t let this thing vacuum up your shake; that’s evidence. What will The monthly subscription fee to store your vacuum data in the cloud cost? It’s a joke… Don’t ban me.
jacooper 4y ago
Its unfortunate that there seems no way to use any kind of home automation without spying. Vacuum robots are pretty useful, but I don't want my home location, its map and many other details to be sent and used for advertising. And it seems there is nothing like this, except maybe offline vaccum robots, which tend to be a lot more limited.
elforce002 4y ago
So, they are truly trying to map everything. Between ring, echo and now this, they're basically mapping 3/5 senses. I'm willing to bet that they'll come up with some type of map service or jump in on the VR space. This is a level of data gathering a government coud only dream of.
markstos 4y ago
Alexa, where you are stuck now?!
O__________O 4y ago
Anyone have a link to a breakdown of iRobots revenue by product-type, business-unit, vertical, etc.? Ask because I am curious how much of their revenue is consumers, industrial, military, etc.
- delecti 4y ago
  It's all domestic now, and has been for some time. > In April 2016, iRobot sold off its Defense & Security unit, with a new company being formed called Endeavor Robotics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRobot#Military_and_policing_robots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRobot#Military_and_policing_r...
  - drannex 4y ago
    Which was then acquired by FLIR in 2019 - https://www.flir.com/news-center/press-releases/flir-systems-to-advance-its-unmanned-solutions-strategy-with-the-acquisition-of-endeavor-robotics/ https://www.flir.com/news-center/press-releases/flir-systems... Which was then acquired by/merged with Teledyne in 2021 - https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210514005348/en/Teledyne-Completes-Acquisition-of-FLIR https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210514005348/en/Tel...
seanw444 4y ago
Now we wait for the cameras and microphones. Gotta hand it to Bezos, they're building a solid fleet of home espionage devices. The modern trend of replacing everything with smart devices reminds me, ironically, of the movie "I, Robot." I wonder how long it'll take for a corporation to go rogue and lock the country down. Maybe not now, or even in 20 years. But they have a lot of power. Imagine that. A corporate-run national coup, all thanks to people's laziness.
macrolime 4y ago
My floors are usually full of pieces of paper,cables and various other itens that prevent robot vacuums from working. I have a roomba S9, but I never use it because it requires a ton of manual work and supervision. Instead I just hire a cleaner a couple times a month. Are there any robot vacuums on the market currently that can handle a lot of mess on the floor?
- prmoustache 4y ago
  I am in the same camp, my roomba is collecting dust (pun intended) in a corner. And they are so noisy and take so much time. From furnitures that aren't compatible to kids leaving socks on the floor or the gf laptop charging cable or ... these things get stuck all the time. I bought back a regular vacuum cleaner and mop manually. It is not that big of a deal. Actually the floor is the easiest and fastest part when it comes to cleaning a house.
- enragedcacti 4y ago
  Eufy, Roborock, and ecovacs all have models with AI-driven obstacle avoidance that seems to work decently. There are a good number of youtube reviews that compare them.
azemetre 4y ago
Huh interesting to note that iRobot has a large Massachusetts presence. Another robotics acquisition from Amazon was also HQ’ed in Mass (Kiva). Interesting to see how far Amazon has expanded into the state (lots of AWS teams are based around seaport as well).
glanzwulf 4y ago
Outside your home with Ring, inside our wallets with the credit cards, inside our home with Echo and now Roomba and then controlling it all with Alexa. How far away are we from a future where Amazon uses roomba/alexa to inspect what we need, what we're missing, and then just ship it to us and charge it on the card?
- bagacrap 4y ago
  using a Roomba to track inventory seems strange but the idea of automatically shipping me what I need instead of a time based subscription sounds wonderful
  - robotnixon 4y ago
    They sort of have something that kind of does that. https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Smart-Shelf/dp/B07RV6X8LZ https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Smart-Shelf/dp/B07RV6X8LZ
- seydor 4y ago
  That sounds like too much work. Better move to one of those new Amazon Human Farms(TM) that offer the amazon way of life for only $1999/mo
wrexx0r 4y ago
Opening my first Roomba was a great experience. Once you open the box there's a paragraph saying how "this is your Roomba, enjoy doing what you want with it. There's documentation online on using the diagnostic serial port to control your Roomba". This and how iRobot still sells all parts for all of their robots all the way back to the original made me find them to be the better company even if their innovation wasn't as competitive.
tokai 4y ago
Ah dang. Will make me think twice about updating my roomba in the future. I was already a bit iffy on having one. but with how the sensors are and the kind of company iRobot was, I thought I could live with it. And I'll definitely never buy an Amazon produced robotic vacuum.
- amelius 4y ago
  Kind of ironic that those most invested in technology are about to turn Amish.
  - bronikowski 4y ago
    I could have written paragraphs about my reluctance to appliance tech but there's a twit that sums it up for me perfectly: https://nitter.it/ppathole/status/1116670170980859905?lang=en https://nitter.it/ppathole/status/1116670170980859905?lang=e...
- JohnFen 4y ago
  Yes, this is very sad news. No more Roombas in my future. At least there are a number of reasonable alternatives, though.
ShaneMcGowan 4y ago
Can’t wait until I’m acquired by Amazon and integrated with Alexa
- osipov 4y ago
dalbasal 4y ago
Robot scabs for the coming union wars in amazon warehouses. Kidding, but maybe that's the actual idea.
- acomjean 4y ago
  Amazon bought Kiva systems for 775 million a few years back to automate their warehouses with robotics. (the robots are the shelves...) I'm not sure how the automation is going, but they're definitely looking to automate as much as possible.. https://spectrum.ieee.org/amazon-acquires-kiva-systems-for-775-million https://spectrum.ieee.org/amazon-acquires-kiva-systems-for-7...
kumarvvr 4y ago
This is great. I was wanting to get a Roomba, but it's too costly in India (the model that has the automatic dust collection thingy) With Amazon buying it, perhaps they will make it available widely here. On an other note, the day is not far off when Amazon not only controls the distribution, but slowly gobbles up the production as well, leading to a idiocracy esque one corporation to rule them all.
hownottowrite 4y ago
Fwiw, they’re not buying Roomba for the tech. They’re buying it for the brand and the customer base.
thesuitonym 4y ago
Is there a robot vacuum that has mapping but doesn't require an internet connection? I know there are some projects to trick robots into working without internet, but I'm looking for one that actually just works. There are some models that don't require internet and just kind of bump around the house, but they don't work well for multiple rooms. Would be nice if there was one that didn't require a cloud connection that will stop working some day.
- Handytinge 4y ago
  Look inyo Valetudo. Plenty of models supported, no cloud connectivity!
- bogomipz 4y ago
  I'm curious what is the correlation of robot vacuums' quality and internet connectivity? Is this just for firmware updates or is there some type of near-real time processing for these done in the cloud?
  - thesuitonym 4y ago
    It's a good question, and I'm not sure I have a great answer. I suspect the main motivator (besides the obvious analytic data) is offloading storage to the cloud.
VyseofArcadia 4y ago
Well dammit. My wife and I do our best to avoid Amazon. It's just infuriating when something we already own and love becomes an Amazon product.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
seydor 4y ago
I have never been satisfied with roomba (granted, i got the basic-level devices). They re just not good and it seems there's loss of otential there. I m thinking to get a cheap xiaomi to give it a try
artdigital 4y ago
That’s sad to hear. I love iRobot because of their privacy stance, even if it means the tech is slightly behind Chinese companies. With Amazon buying them, I have little hope that privacy ethics stay the same. Maybe time to move on to some other brand
- hoosieree 4y ago
  Or a broom and dustpan, assuming you can find one without Wi-Fi.
bpodgursky 4y ago
$1.7B is a remarkably low price given the amount of popular mindshare iRobot has.
- scoopertrooper 4y ago
  They're getting eaten alive by competition though. Their first mover advantage has largely dissipated. Amazon might be able to give them exactly the kind of capital injection they need to get back in front. Alternatively, they might end up just becoming a brand sitting on top of an OEM. Time will tell!
  - _ea1k 4y ago
    That's a good point. They look like a premium-ish brand in a space that is rapidly becoming commoditized. That's exactly where Amazon tends to do well with hardware.
sethjr5rtfgh 4y ago
eh9 4y ago
And I’m about to drop my Roomba on the second hand market.
interestica 4y ago
I mean they aren't just doing vacuums. And I wonder if there's some other tech there that Amazon is interested in. For instance they have the "Root" and "Create" which is meant to teach coding and robotics. https://www.irobot.ca/en_CA/root.html https://www.irobot.ca/en_CA/root.html
aaur0 4y ago
I am not sure about dirt, but this will help Amazon collect a lot of data for sure
tra3 4y ago
I had a roomba 10 years ago, before kids. With all the detritus that comes with kids, auto-vac was not a good option. Now that kids are older and we maintain some semblance of control over clutter I want to get one again. Any personal advice on what a good unit might be? Amazon or not.
- Falcorian 4y ago
  I trust Vacuum Wars for technical reviews of vacuums and vacuum robots: https://youtube.com/c/VacuumWars https://youtube.com/c/VacuumWars Looks like their big robot round up is about 9 months old, but they have single model reviews as well. Edit: A little bit on why I like this review channel: A lot of gadget reviews I read nowadays about household products are like "I like this robot it did a good job cleaning. Sometimes got stuck but not too bad." Vacuum wars is like: "I worked 500 g of fine sand into our test carpet and ran the robot for 5 minutes. It picked up 362 g of sand which is 32% better than the average for this category and the best of the current robots that I've tried. Now, on the artificial hair test, the rotors tangled after just 50g which is a poor result for this category... " He's set up a testing suite. He runs all of the vacuums through it. You can compare the results. It's how reviews should be.
  - ulrashida 4y ago
    I use both Roomba and Roborock in my house. Unfortunately that will be less Roomba going forward as I'm soured on the Amazon ecosystem. I wholeheartedly recommend the Roborock devices. They're exactly where they need to be feature-wise and their app is workably okay. Very high WAF guarantees they'll always have a spot in the house.
FloatArtifact 4y ago
I'm not a fan of Amazon or Chinese companies connecting things to the cloud that don't need to be. What I liked about the Roomba brand is reparability. They actually make quite a few wear parts replaceable including wheels. However, I decided against for privacy as there was no way to block cloud access without losing functionality. Since then I purchased a Dreamy Z10 Pro and have been very happy with a rooted and lobotomized from corporate cloud services using valetudo while retaining nearly all functionality and integrating with home assistant. https://valetudo.cloud/ https://valetudo.cloud/ With 3D printers nowadays, community should pull together to create an open source robot vacuum. There are a few out there but they're more like personal projects.
nrmitchi 4y ago
I'm just going to put my tin-foil hat on for a second. Not entirely sure how I would feel about Amazon having control over a machine full of sensors that can physically move around within my home.
smk_ 4y ago
Personally I'm looking forward to an Amazon home. Ring, Echo and Roomba – I will feel well taken care of and always safe.
micheljansen 4y ago
Very frustrating that all these smart devices keep getting acquired by big data hungry companies. Ring, Nest, Roomba… I like these toys because… well, I like toys, but I don’t like the idea that they can change owner after I buy them.
- bogomipz 4y ago
  With Ring, Alexa and Roomba and Prime, it's pretty mind blowing how much a single corporation can know about a person's home life. I'm sure there are lots of people who will be consumers of all 4 of these things.
repple 4y ago
A ..formidable response to Tesla’s humanoid robot project.
xpil 4y ago
This vividly reminds me of "The Washing Machine Tragedy", a story in the "Memoirs of a Space Traveller" book by Stanisław Lem. Highly recommended to any fan of house automation.
xpil 4y ago
This vividly reminds me of "The Washing Machine Tragedy", a story in the "Memoirs of a Space Traveller" book by Stanisław Lem. Highly recommended to any fan of house automation.
connor11528 4y ago
Amazon will own your healthcare (one medical), your vacuum (irobot), the movies you watch (mgm, prime) and where you get your groceries (whole foods)
wnevets 4y ago
oh no. How long until Amazon implements the house mapping tech iRobot got in trouble for even mentioning? [1] [1] https://www.sciencealert.com/your-roomba-could-be-silently-mapping-the-interior-of-your-home-as-we-speak https://www.sciencealert.com/your-roomba-could-be-silently-m...
DoctorD68 4y ago
FTC says what? Why doesn't AMZN just buy a ride share company already to close the loop on data collection.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jedberg 4y ago
Here's a tangential thought I just had: One of the main selling points of robot vacuums is that they can work while you're away at work, so your house is magically clean when you get back. Now that a bunch of people work from home, will the usefulness drop? If you're always home, when do you schedule the vacuum to run so it doesn't get in the way or make loud noises during a meeting? Or if you get the wet mopping model, when does it run so the floor has time to dry?
- davidn20 4y ago
  I WFH for the entire time I had my roborock. The sound is annoying, but I still run it every day. The main selling point for me is I don't have to vacuum.
fezfight 4y ago
Well there goes any reason to ever buy one. Anyone working on FOSS 3D printable robot vacuums?
say_it_as_it_is 4y ago
Oh my god, they're going to use them to sonar the interior of all of our homes.
- micheljansen 4y ago
  “Check out this chest of drawers that would fit perfectly in that corner over there!”
- say_it_as_it_is 4y ago
  Looks like others agree: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-05/amazon-s-irobot-deal-is-about-roomba-s-data-collection https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-05/amazon-s-... Shout out to the HN down-voters.
protomyth 4y ago
I really do hope the technology to identify (chemically) what it is sucking up is not available because I can only imagine what Amazon could do with that information (well, other that send it to police without a warrant like Ring videos).
- walterbell 4y ago
  Macro lens + high frame rate camera + machine learning correlation of motion in wind tunnel?
jonym 4y ago
I guess embedded microphones are the next thing to be added to these. It's for better voice control guys, nothing to see here.
ggregoire 4y ago
How do these cleaning bots handle corners? Do they have a way to reach them or they just skip them?
gnicholas 4y ago
I'm surprised that none of the comments mention iRobot's recent 50% stock decline, 30% drop in Q2 sales, or layoff announcement (10% of workforce). I wonder how this deal would have gone down (if at all) had iRobot not encountered these headwinds.
kodah 4y ago
I am really sad to see this. iRobot's support is second to none in my experience. Their new vacuum that produces maps of the house and has a base station with a bag has been a delight. The parts aren't to expensive, the service is good, and they constantly improve my existing bot. All of this, I'm sure, will go out the window along with a fear that my house will not become a well of data.
fareesh 4y ago
Jordan Peterson voice: Hey Alexa clean my goddamn room
LightG 4y ago
This feels like a mistake unless Amazon have a trick up their sleeves. My experience with Roombas has been awful.
phendrenad2 4y ago
I wonder if this has anything to do with the CHIPS Act. It seems like a good time to look around and see if you can acquire a company and somehow capture some (or more) of that funding.
cmckn 4y ago
I haven't found a reasonable solution for multi-level dwellings; interested in how others address this. If you just have 2 floors, it's reasonable to purchase 2 of these bots; but if you need a third, it starts to feel excessive. In something like a townhouse, with several floors that are individually not that big, for example. Not to mention I still need to clean all the stairs manually, and those are by nature high-traffic. Do folks move their bot to different floors weekly, or something like that?

482 points by mrkramer 4y ago

FTC just blocked FB from buying a VR app. Will be interesting to see if this gets through. Very little roomba to maneuver in this regulatory environment. I'll see myself out.

mrkramer 4y ago
- morelisp 4y ago
  Why is she wrong?
  - mrkramer 4y ago
    Because she thinks she can predict the future in a way that she believes she knows what is the best for the market in the long term.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      That sounds like a criticism of economists, not lawyers.
      - mrkramer 4y ago
        If you are a neoliberal economist that's not bad criticism because less government intervention the better for the market.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      To be clear, this is an incredibly non-specific (neither her nor the merger in question) criticism, so you are proposing that no merger should ever be blocked for any reason?
      - mrkramer 4y ago
        Scrutinize big mergers don't block smaller acquisitions because you think you know that sometime in the future the smaller company will become big healthy competitor.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        That's not what they think they know. They think they know Facebook has the financial resources to buy out anyone with even a slight chance of becoming a competitor, and are leveraging that in an anti-competitive fashion.
        mrkramer 4y ago
        >They think they know Facebook has the financial resources to buy out anyone with even a slight chance of becoming a competitor, and are leveraging that in an anti-competitive fashion. Ofc they know it; Facebook/Meta is a public company with a huge cash pile and the pressure from investors to spend that cash is only increasing. They already spend billions for R&D just like their tech peers and the best way to spend the rest of the cash is apparently acquisitions.
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      That's what VCs do every day by picking winners and losers. Companies like Uber would not have made it (and still might not make it) without massive cash injections. In practice, how is VCs choosing winners different than the FTC doing so?
      - mrkramer 4y ago
        VCs are private companies which invest and manage private money and they are not regulating anything. FTC is a government entity which is required by law to regulate markets. That is my layman understanding. And there are hundreds of VCs so if one VC does not believe in your mission and vision find another one but there is only one FTC.
  - nindalf 4y ago
    I'm not the other person, but in my view it's impossible to evaluate the full impact of an acquisition. What you need to do is envision futures where the acquisition does and doesn't take place. And then you have to be satisfied that in both futures, the market and customers suffer no injury. And then you have to justify that decision 10 years later to people who have the benefit of hindsight. It's in vogue to criticise the FTC approval of the Instagram merger, for instance. The critics almost take it for granted that Instagram was going to grow by 100x over the next decade no matter what Facebook did. And that the FTC should have known this very obvious fact and blocked the merger. And then this criticism-with-hindsight is used to criticise all past and future tech acquisitions.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    Blocking the Meta Within acquisition is a worrying precedent because the app in question has a miniscule user base. VR just isn't that popular. I'm guessing they probably have 100k paying users, at most. How can ownership of a product with 100,000 users (globally!) in a country of 330 million people become an antitrust question? FTC leadership's theory seems to be that VR could eventually become a giant market, and if it does, Meta might one day have a position that raises antitrust concerns. But all this is clearly many years, even decades away. By the same logic, they can block any forward-looking small acquisition by any large technology company. And that ought to be a problem for the HN crowd because getting acquired by big tech is one of the primary exits available to interesting startups.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      > getting acquired by big tech is one of the primary exits available to interesting startups. Right, but the claim wasn't that it was bad for the capitalist class, and neither is protecting their personal interests the office's remit. Letting trusts happen is always good for someone, that's not a reason to allow them.
      - pavlov 4y ago
        The startup ecosystem is one of USA's greatest economical strengths. Pragmatically, it's just completely puzzling to me what FTC intends to achieve here. Do they want less startups and less speculative R&D investment in America? Because it seems like a bad idea for FTC to create these new arbitrary rules that will chill investment in startups, and the only purpose is to punish a corporation whose founder has been spending $10 billion annually on R&D in VR with no profits in sight. Why not let Zuck spend on VR? Most of that money actually flows back into the US economy. Meta becoming a boring dividend-paying corporation would be enriching the capitalist class far worse.
        AlexandrB 4y ago
        Startups that exit into an acquisition by FAANG generally end up abandoning their products and hurting their customers. As someone who has been burned by this, I'd like to see this exit strategy become less common.
- rafram 4y ago
  That seems like a pretty arbitrary benchmark. (And I feel like you haven’t met too many econ grads if you think an econ degree is an instant ticket to knowing what you’re doing.)
snarf21 4y ago
We can only hope. The FTC and SEC have been largely absent in the 21st century. We need the CPC to start taking priority over stock price and the market.
__derek__ 4y ago
> FTC just blocked FB from buying a VR app. No, the FTC filed a lawsuit to attempt to stop the deal, despite the fact that FTC staff recommended against it.[1] The suit is a political sideshow. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-29/ftc-s-khan-overruled-staff-to-sue-meta-over-virtual-reality-deal https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-29/ftc-s-kha...

andiareso 4y ago

Please NO! I don't want to have to get rid of my Roombas! I just bought a new one.

mrkramer 4y ago

Also covered here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/amazon-is-buying-irobot-for-1-7b/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/amazon-is-buying-irobot-fo... https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/5/23293349/amazon-acquires-irobot-roomba-robot-vacuums https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/5/23293349/amazon-acquires-i...

bhouston 4y ago

Interesting. I do love my Roomba. I think they are very popular. I guess this will improve the Alexa integration. Other home robots on the way I suspect?

uptown 4y ago

Ring for the cameras outside your house. Roomba for the cameras rolling around the inside of your house.

cainxinth 4y ago

Not a huge number for this day and age. Household cleaning robots must be a low margin business.

dtagames 4y ago
For a device manufacturer? It seems like a pretty huge number to me. And for what these things sell for, pretty high margin, too.

jitl 4y ago

Roomba / iRobot is years behind the Chinese companies. We just got an Ecovacs X1 Omni - a mopping vacuum bot with actual rotating mop scrubbers, AI vision obstacle avoidance, LIDAR mapping, and most importantly fully automated water fill & mop pad cleaning at the base station. We fill a clean water tank & empty the dirty one about once a week. Floors are spotless - huge difference from static cloth mopping bots. Meanwhile, iRobot still hadn’t figured out how to make an effective stand-alone mop bot, much less an auto fill station or combined bot that actually works. Roborock and Ecovacs products launch in China 6-12 months before their US launch. By the time Roomba has a decent mop bot, the X2 or X3 will probably be out offering integration with home plumbing to avoid any manual intervention for months at a time. EDIT: commenters are asking what works offline from Roborock / Ecovacs. For the self-cleaning-mop generation like the X1 Omni: - Roborock obstacle avoidance is local, but works better with cloud. - Roborock can be controlled by a local home automation server without internet access. - Ecovacs obstacle avoidance requires cloud. - Ecovacs control requires cloud. I remembered these stats from a Youtube video that I can't find; probably in my partner's history since we watched reviews on the TV together. I picked the X1 Omni over the Roborock because it has superior mopping performance on tile floors, but I think both would be good options. It seems like Roborock is more privacy compatible.

martincmartin 4y ago
Doesn't iRobot make more from military contracts than consumer facing?
- braingenious 4y ago
  It looks like they sold their military business in 2016.
bearjaws 4y ago
Yeah I went from a Roomba 960 (2018) to a Xiaomi Roborock S7 and in my research it was eye opening to see the level of tech difference between the two, even the modern Roomba is using a vision only model, and poorly based on reviews. For the same price, Roborock has Lidar scanning, AI obstacle avoidance and mopping. The thing is, it actually works in the Roborock, it can even spot cords and other misc items around my house and avoid them entirely. Additionally since it maps using Lidar it completes a complete cleaning of my living room + kitchen area in 22 minutes, whole house in under 40 minutes. That is with it covering literally every square inch of carpet & tile instead of going around in random patterns...

nerdjon 4y ago

On the one hand I am excited about this, on the other hand I am worried. With Amazon's issues around Ring I am worried about the privacy side of this. So how they handle that will remain to be seen. But I also see iRobot struggling with the innovation aspect on the home side of things. Especially when it comes to the quality and price point of their robots compared to the competition. If amazon takes some of their more price conscious approach to iRobot (or more justified the cost compared to competition) I think that would be great. Personally I went with iRobot for my last vacuum after constant struggles with lidar robots just being ineffective for home. They can't handle things moving around like they do at home. But I can't ignore that as a vacuum it is not as good as what I had before and cost twice as much.

pull_my_finger 4y ago

I wonder if Amazon actually cares about cleaning robots, or if they're after the data roomba collects? https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/28/16055590/roomba-wont-sell-data-irobot https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/28/16055590/roomba-wont-sell...

agilob 4y ago
Schema of your property, number of people living there and times where no one is at home is definitely useful for amazon.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  And for burglars.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    I assume you're talking about the kind with a badge. Normal criminals don't get access to Amazon's info before entering a house.
    - alistairSH 4y ago
      Maybe I'm just paranoid, but it's only a matter of time until Amazon's data is leaked and sold on the black market. Correlate house layout, number of residents and their schedules, plus income bracket (from another source, possibly also from Amazon), and it's a blueprint for burglars looking for an easy score in an upper-middle class neighborhood.
      - darkwater 4y ago
        Your take reminds me of https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
      - 4y ago

prepend 4y ago

I just bought a roomba and was happy that they weren’t owned by Google or Amazon. This is unfortunate. I owned nests before Google bought them and it was sad to both see their innovation decline (basically the same now as 8 years ago) and usability decline (forcing Google logins).

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
Time to do what I did to every hardware product I owned which Google acquired: Rip it out, delete my account, and try to make my money back selling it to someone else. I actually made a profit on both my Nest and my Fitbit so far! Though the Nest was from energy rebates before I resold it, and the Fitbit was from it's recall for burn risk... Recall paid MSRP, not the price I purchased it for.
andrew_ 4y ago
I have two Nest-E devices in the home and have not enabled Google login. If you can find the older versions of the thermostats, you can factory reset them, stick them on a guest network without internal access, and never use the Google login, just the old Nest login. Not sure how long that'll stay like that, but it's doable at present.
- prepend 4y ago
  I haven’t enabled Google login either but I get nagware from nest and Google asking me to. I really like my nest and hope I can keep them for a long time.
chaostheory 4y ago
I’m normally skewering how Google manages their physical products, but Tbf Nest declined due to mismanagement by Tony Fadel, one of the founders. Google gave Nest tons of money which didn’t lead to anything major materializing instead of delay after delay.
- prepend 4y ago
  Fadell left Nest in 2016. Maybe the early stagnation can be blamed on him. But Google has had the reigns for 6 years and nest has really not done anything substantial.

tehwebguy 4y ago

Is 1X revenue good?

rexreed 4y ago
Depends which direction that revenue is going. Anyways multiples of profit is a better measure if the business is making money. After all you could have a multi-billion dollar company tomorrow selling gas for $1/gallon. but you'd also be losing $3-4 for every $1 you make. A pretty good analogy for many tech companies.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
No. It is a sign that profits and profit margins are low and not expected to grow much anytime soon. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IRBT/irobot/net-profit-margin https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IRBT/irobot/net-pr... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IRBT/irobot/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IRBT/irobot/net-in...

crmd 4y ago

The police will soon appreciate access to an interior diagram of your house and the number of people inside, along with the exterior Ring camera video feeds. For public safety of course.

InCityDreams 4y ago
Satellite overhead imagery + actual windows would give the cops enough to go on. Oh, and all the plans that are in the town hall. And my lawyer has a copy. A stakeout would give the number of people inside, as well as cellphone data a la stingray.
- hedora 4y ago
  Yeah, but a roomba can debunk an alibi from last tuesday, and (as a bonus for prosecutors) probably isn’t great at avoiding mistaken identities.
erinnh 4y ago
Roomba vSLAM = camera in robots. No idea if they have filters (to blur out details) on the Roomba robots or not.

patwolf 4y ago

I've always wondered how iRobot hasn't been more successful. They have a cool name, brand recognition, first-mover advantage. It's been nearly 20 years since their IPO. I would have expected by now that robots would have taken over more household cleaning tasks, but it doesn't seem like the technology has improved much in the past two decades. I gave up on my roomba because it would always get stuck in something before it could finish cleaning. I now use a Dyson stick vac.

soco 4y ago
Maybe they were so successful that some MBA decided to maximize shareholder value by cutting on superfluous R&D?
- _ea1k 4y ago
  That seems to be the Neato story right now.
criley2 4y ago
The technology has come a long way in these years and the modern models are pretty good devices. I use a Miele canister vac for the deep cleans but I also have a Eufy and a Roborock robot vaccum, one does the random bouncing and the other uses LIDAR to map and clean intentionally, and they're both great. I run them several times a week and the amount of stuff they pull out of the carpet, rugs and off the hard floors is incredible. I would never bust out the Miele several times a week.
pelorat 4y ago
They lost because the competition is better. Roborock and Ecovacs are superior devices to any of iRobots' offerings.
theplumber 4y ago
Their robots started to suck after a while ! They are more interested in extracting more from their customers than creating better robots. Best example is their mopping robot that they try to market using a kind of "subscription" model with proprietary pads. The chinese roborock is so much better and they get better after each release.

zahma 4y ago

Is Amazon in the position where they have so much cash on hand that the most promising short-term growth strategy is for them to aggressively buy new companies? It seems like this is a model of growth for over-expansion —- or world domination along the lines of tech-campus states in Oryx and Crake. They have their fingers in so many pies and realms of data that it seems like they are quickly becoming hegemonic data holders. They’re already expanding into healthcare, which chills me to my bone, beyond that they’ve basically covered every facet of the typical Westerner’s existence with no sign of stopping. It’s high time for anti-trust laws on data, including the sharing and mass aggregation of data through and by intermediates.

lettergram 4y ago

Well … time to get rid of my roomba. The idea that they’ll have ring outside, a camera inside monitoring every movement is kinda nuts, and Alexa monitoring all audio is insane. We already know Amazon has a service to sell data to police. I don’t know what people will expect here.

danjoredd 4y ago
We elect our true leaders with each of our purchases, and our ballot is every receipt we get
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
It's interesting because I would totally go for that if I could run all of the services locally with some digital assistant AI to tie it together and manage them. It's tragic, really. The cool future I imagined is here but there is a catch. There's always a catch.
firstSpeaker 4y ago
Could you elaborate more on "We already know Amazon has a service to sell data to police" statement?
- belval 4y ago
  It's plain not true, Amazon has shared information with the police, but they don't make money from it. It's also not large-scale with only 11 requests in 2022. There are plenty of reasons to dislike Amazon, no need to invent one: > Ring says it will only "respond immediately to urgent law enforcement requests for information in cases involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person." Its policy is to review any requests for assistance from police, then make "a good-faith determination whether the request meets the well-known standard, grounded in federal law, that there is imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requiring disclosure of information without delay." https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/07/amazon-finally-admits-giving-cops-ring-doorbell-data-without-user-consent/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/07/amazon-finally-a...

KingOfCoders 4y ago

When Vorwerk bought Neato, products went downhill. I hope - and assume with Amazons tech understanding - this is not the case here (Here Xiaomi has replaced most appliances, e.g. air purifiers etc. and will be our next robot too).

roland35 4y ago

I have heard from a former irobot employee that they were besieged by the same issues I had while working in consumer robotics: endless priority changes and lack of long term product vision. This is why their lawn mower robot apparently failed to launch I feel like if a company just focused on the basics (ie reliable cleaning) instead of a bunch of different marketing gimmicks, it will work out long term.

gbba 4y ago
> focus on the basics instead of marketing gimmicks This reminds me of what Steve Jobs said about Xerox[0]. After achieving market leadership in their industry, engineering at iRobot seems to have been pushed aside in the company's decision making process. Is this a consequence of being a publicly traded company? After all, pushing consumables and subscription services requires less capital and makes more money compared to developing a better robot. The $1.7B exit seems like a good outcome for a stagnant (relative to its peers) company. [0] https://youtu.be/NlBjNmXvqIM?t=56 https://youtu.be/NlBjNmXvqIM?t=56
- roland35 4y ago
  I ran into this issue even in a private company. Hardware takes a long time, and I think leadership doesn't realize how hard it actually is do get the basic functionality done RELIABLY. That is - having a demo of a working lawn mower / vacuum cleaner / whatever is fairly easy (I've seen Arduino based projects online), but having it work in variety of settings and conditions without user intervention for years takes a very long time to work out the bugs. I think over time leadership gets frustrated with seemingly lack of progress on the foundation, while efforts to change the high level features (app, smart home integration, GPS, etc) distract from the core product. Just my 2c

syntaxing 4y ago

I mean not trying to start a flame war, but everyone is praising how great roborock is but the reality is, most of Xiaomi/Roborock technology is stolen/reversed engineered from Neato. Chinese robot vacuum would not even be close to their current capabilities if it wasn’t for the LiDAR on the XV11. If you look at the tear down from the first couple gen, the PCB and components were exactly the same compared to Neatos. (I owned both Neato and Roborock vacuums).

blocked_again 4y ago
Why does it matter? In grand scheme of things there are now more people who have access to cheaper and efficent cleaning systems. All companies are reverse engineering the Universe anyway. It's not like you build these technologies out of thin air.
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  Why does it matter in the grand scheme of things to point out stolen tech?
- jker 4y ago
  Please spend the next year doing a bunch of free engineering and design work for me, thanks in advance.
  - blocked_again 4y ago
    The companies knew that copyright infringement is a possibility when developing the tech. They knew the reward was still worth it despite of that. I am not getting anything designing work for you. On the other hand I can launch my own side projects. I know that if they are any good people are going to copy and start rip offs. I am willing to take that risk.
- knodi123 4y ago
  Why does large-scale corporate IP theft matter? Well, for one thing, I can't imagine the next Neato being willing to invest in all that R&D if a chinese company is going to rip it off and sell it for peanuts, just so the internet can say "wow, this chinese product is amazing, and I don't know why corporate IP theft matters!"

xsgb 4y ago

I already wonder how people does accept alexa, google home, smart fridges, smart TV and smartphones overloaded with trackers. Now bots full of cameras and obviously connected to internet are coming.

chaostheory 4y ago
Convenience. It’s the same reason many people will pick safety over freedom. I’m not making a judgement. It’s just an observation.
- xsgb 4y ago
  I see it more like the consumerism culture alimented with strong marketing that convince people there's something to gain while occluding any downsides: any individual or collective loss. Like the loss of privacy or the pollution caused by a gadget industry relying on batteries, plastics, consumed power put together, [...].
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    You wouldn’t understand until you’ve used one on a daily basis. The marketing can only do so much if the products don’t actually deliver. They deliver
- rurp 4y ago
  Marketing is a huge part of it as well. There are a lot of slick online and physical ads for these products. Heck, most of these devices were created by ad companies.

heurisko 4y ago

I expect this is to gain patents/technology around making autonomous robots, so that Amazon can create a warehouse system similar to Ocado, where robots, rather than people, pick groceries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKrcpa8Z_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKrcpa8Z_E

quantumduck 4y ago
And what makes you think Amazon doesn't do that yet? Kiva systems did what Ocado does now a DECADE go. Amazon acquired kiva systems (infact, Amazon robotics was born out of this acquisition) long long ago and I'm sure can do a lot more than Ocado does now.
- heurisko 4y ago
  > And what makes you think Amazon doesn't do that yet? Because I still see a lot of human beings employed picking things in Amazon warehouses.

millerm 4y ago

I expect the Amazon version to require wi-fi or cellular, will have microphones and cameras for “Alexa support”, and will automatically submit the stream to the police of what the Amazon operatives, sorry “operators”, deem sketchy. Remember kids if you live in a state where “it” is not legal, don’t let this thing vacuum up your shake; that’s evidence. What will The monthly subscription fee to store your vacuum data in the cloud cost? It’s a joke… Don’t ban me.

jacooper 4y ago

Its unfortunate that there seems no way to use any kind of home automation without spying. Vacuum robots are pretty useful, but I don't want my home location, its map and many other details to be sent and used for advertising. And it seems there is nothing like this, except maybe offline vaccum robots, which tend to be a lot more limited.

elforce002 4y ago

So, they are truly trying to map everything. Between ring, echo and now this, they're basically mapping 3/5 senses. I'm willing to bet that they'll come up with some type of map service or jump in on the VR space. This is a level of data gathering a government coud only dream of.

markstos 4y ago

Alexa, where you are stuck now?!

O__________O 4y ago

Anyone have a link to a breakdown of iRobots revenue by product-type, business-unit, vertical, etc.? Ask because I am curious how much of their revenue is consumers, industrial, military, etc.

delecti 4y ago
It's all domestic now, and has been for some time. > In April 2016, iRobot sold off its Defense & Security unit, with a new company being formed called Endeavor Robotics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRobot#Military_and_policing_robots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRobot#Military_and_policing_r...
- drannex 4y ago
  Which was then acquired by FLIR in 2019 - https://www.flir.com/news-center/press-releases/flir-systems-to-advance-its-unmanned-solutions-strategy-with-the-acquisition-of-endeavor-robotics/ https://www.flir.com/news-center/press-releases/flir-systems... Which was then acquired by/merged with Teledyne in 2021 - https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210514005348/en/Teledyne-Completes-Acquisition-of-FLIR https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210514005348/en/Tel...

seanw444 4y ago

Now we wait for the cameras and microphones. Gotta hand it to Bezos, they're building a solid fleet of home espionage devices. The modern trend of replacing everything with smart devices reminds me, ironically, of the movie "I, Robot." I wonder how long it'll take for a corporation to go rogue and lock the country down. Maybe not now, or even in 20 years. But they have a lot of power. Imagine that. A corporate-run national coup, all thanks to people's laziness.

macrolime 4y ago

My floors are usually full of pieces of paper,cables and various other itens that prevent robot vacuums from working. I have a roomba S9, but I never use it because it requires a ton of manual work and supervision. Instead I just hire a cleaner a couple times a month. Are there any robot vacuums on the market currently that can handle a lot of mess on the floor?

prmoustache 4y ago
I am in the same camp, my roomba is collecting dust (pun intended) in a corner. And they are so noisy and take so much time. From furnitures that aren't compatible to kids leaving socks on the floor or the gf laptop charging cable or ... these things get stuck all the time. I bought back a regular vacuum cleaner and mop manually. It is not that big of a deal. Actually the floor is the easiest and fastest part when it comes to cleaning a house.
enragedcacti 4y ago
Eufy, Roborock, and ecovacs all have models with AI-driven obstacle avoidance that seems to work decently. There are a good number of youtube reviews that compare them.

azemetre 4y ago

Huh interesting to note that iRobot has a large Massachusetts presence. Another robotics acquisition from Amazon was also HQ’ed in Mass (Kiva). Interesting to see how far Amazon has expanded into the state (lots of AWS teams are based around seaport as well).

glanzwulf 4y ago

Outside your home with Ring, inside our wallets with the credit cards, inside our home with Echo and now Roomba and then controlling it all with Alexa. How far away are we from a future where Amazon uses roomba/alexa to inspect what we need, what we're missing, and then just ship it to us and charge it on the card?

bagacrap 4y ago
using a Roomba to track inventory seems strange but the idea of automatically shipping me what I need instead of a time based subscription sounds wonderful
- robotnixon 4y ago
  They sort of have something that kind of does that. https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Smart-Shelf/dp/B07RV6X8LZ https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Smart-Shelf/dp/B07RV6X8LZ
seydor 4y ago
That sounds like too much work. Better move to one of those new Amazon Human Farms(TM) that offer the amazon way of life for only $1999/mo

wrexx0r 4y ago

Opening my first Roomba was a great experience. Once you open the box there's a paragraph saying how "this is your Roomba, enjoy doing what you want with it. There's documentation online on using the diagnostic serial port to control your Roomba". This and how iRobot still sells all parts for all of their robots all the way back to the original made me find them to be the better company even if their innovation wasn't as competitive.

tokai 4y ago

Ah dang. Will make me think twice about updating my roomba in the future. I was already a bit iffy on having one. but with how the sensors are and the kind of company iRobot was, I thought I could live with it. And I'll definitely never buy an Amazon produced robotic vacuum.

amelius 4y ago
Kind of ironic that those most invested in technology are about to turn Amish.
- bronikowski 4y ago
  I could have written paragraphs about my reluctance to appliance tech but there's a twit that sums it up for me perfectly: https://nitter.it/ppathole/status/1116670170980859905?lang=en https://nitter.it/ppathole/status/1116670170980859905?lang=e...
JohnFen 4y ago
Yes, this is very sad news. No more Roombas in my future. At least there are a number of reasonable alternatives, though.

ShaneMcGowan 4y ago

Can’t wait until I’m acquired by Amazon and integrated with Alexa

osipov 4y ago

dalbasal 4y ago

Robot scabs for the coming union wars in amazon warehouses. Kidding, but maybe that's the actual idea.

acomjean 4y ago
Amazon bought Kiva systems for 775 million a few years back to automate their warehouses with robotics. (the robots are the shelves...) I'm not sure how the automation is going, but they're definitely looking to automate as much as possible.. https://spectrum.ieee.org/amazon-acquires-kiva-systems-for-775-million https://spectrum.ieee.org/amazon-acquires-kiva-systems-for-7...

kumarvvr 4y ago

This is great. I was wanting to get a Roomba, but it's too costly in India (the model that has the automatic dust collection thingy) With Amazon buying it, perhaps they will make it available widely here. On an other note, the day is not far off when Amazon not only controls the distribution, but slowly gobbles up the production as well, leading to a idiocracy esque one corporation to rule them all.

hownottowrite 4y ago

Fwiw, they’re not buying Roomba for the tech. They’re buying it for the brand and the customer base.

thesuitonym 4y ago

Is there a robot vacuum that has mapping but doesn't require an internet connection? I know there are some projects to trick robots into working without internet, but I'm looking for one that actually just works. There are some models that don't require internet and just kind of bump around the house, but they don't work well for multiple rooms. Would be nice if there was one that didn't require a cloud connection that will stop working some day.

Handytinge 4y ago
Look inyo Valetudo. Plenty of models supported, no cloud connectivity!
bogomipz 4y ago
I'm curious what is the correlation of robot vacuums' quality and internet connectivity? Is this just for firmware updates or is there some type of near-real time processing for these done in the cloud?
- thesuitonym 4y ago
  It's a good question, and I'm not sure I have a great answer. I suspect the main motivator (besides the obvious analytic data) is offloading storage to the cloud.

VyseofArcadia 4y ago

Well dammit. My wife and I do our best to avoid Amazon. It's just infuriating when something we already own and love becomes an Amazon product.

deleted 4y ago
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seydor 4y ago

I have never been satisfied with roomba (granted, i got the basic-level devices). They re just not good and it seems there's loss of otential there. I m thinking to get a cheap xiaomi to give it a try

artdigital 4y ago

That’s sad to hear. I love iRobot because of their privacy stance, even if it means the tech is slightly behind Chinese companies. With Amazon buying them, I have little hope that privacy ethics stay the same. Maybe time to move on to some other brand

hoosieree 4y ago
Or a broom and dustpan, assuming you can find one without Wi-Fi.

bpodgursky 4y ago

$1.7B is a remarkably low price given the amount of popular mindshare iRobot has.

scoopertrooper 4y ago
They're getting eaten alive by competition though. Their first mover advantage has largely dissipated. Amazon might be able to give them exactly the kind of capital injection they need to get back in front. Alternatively, they might end up just becoming a brand sitting on top of an OEM. Time will tell!
- _ea1k 4y ago
  That's a good point. They look like a premium-ish brand in a space that is rapidly becoming commoditized. That's exactly where Amazon tends to do well with hardware.

sethjr5rtfgh 4y ago

eh9 4y ago

And I’m about to drop my Roomba on the second hand market.

interestica 4y ago

I mean they aren't just doing vacuums. And I wonder if there's some other tech there that Amazon is interested in. For instance they have the "Root" and "Create" which is meant to teach coding and robotics. https://www.irobot.ca/en_CA/root.html https://www.irobot.ca/en_CA/root.html

aaur0 4y ago

I am not sure about dirt, but this will help Amazon collect a lot of data for sure

tra3 4y ago

I had a roomba 10 years ago, before kids. With all the detritus that comes with kids, auto-vac was not a good option. Now that kids are older and we maintain some semblance of control over clutter I want to get one again. Any personal advice on what a good unit might be? Amazon or not.

Falcorian 4y ago
I trust Vacuum Wars for technical reviews of vacuums and vacuum robots: https://youtube.com/c/VacuumWars https://youtube.com/c/VacuumWars Looks like their big robot round up is about 9 months old, but they have single model reviews as well. Edit: A little bit on why I like this review channel: A lot of gadget reviews I read nowadays about household products are like "I like this robot it did a good job cleaning. Sometimes got stuck but not too bad." Vacuum wars is like: "I worked 500 g of fine sand into our test carpet and ran the robot for 5 minutes. It picked up 362 g of sand which is 32% better than the average for this category and the best of the current robots that I've tried. Now, on the artificial hair test, the rotors tangled after just 50g which is a poor result for this category... " He's set up a testing suite. He runs all of the vacuums through it. You can compare the results. It's how reviews should be.
- ulrashida 4y ago
  I use both Roomba and Roborock in my house. Unfortunately that will be less Roomba going forward as I'm soured on the Amazon ecosystem. I wholeheartedly recommend the Roborock devices. They're exactly where they need to be feature-wise and their app is workably okay. Very high WAF guarantees they'll always have a spot in the house.

FloatArtifact 4y ago

I'm not a fan of Amazon or Chinese companies connecting things to the cloud that don't need to be. What I liked about the Roomba brand is reparability. They actually make quite a few wear parts replaceable including wheels. However, I decided against for privacy as there was no way to block cloud access without losing functionality. Since then I purchased a Dreamy Z10 Pro and have been very happy with a rooted and lobotomized from corporate cloud services using valetudo while retaining nearly all functionality and integrating with home assistant. https://valetudo.cloud/ https://valetudo.cloud/ With 3D printers nowadays, community should pull together to create an open source robot vacuum. There are a few out there but they're more like personal projects.

nrmitchi 4y ago

I'm just going to put my tin-foil hat on for a second. Not entirely sure how I would feel about Amazon having control over a machine full of sensors that can physically move around within my home.

smk_ 4y ago

Personally I'm looking forward to an Amazon home. Ring, Echo and Roomba – I will feel well taken care of and always safe.

micheljansen 4y ago

Very frustrating that all these smart devices keep getting acquired by big data hungry companies. Ring, Nest, Roomba… I like these toys because… well, I like toys, but I don’t like the idea that they can change owner after I buy them.

bogomipz 4y ago
With Ring, Alexa and Roomba and Prime, it's pretty mind blowing how much a single corporation can know about a person's home life. I'm sure there are lots of people who will be consumers of all 4 of these things.

repple 4y ago

A ..formidable response to Tesla’s humanoid robot project.

xpil 4y ago

This vividly reminds me of "The Washing Machine Tragedy", a story in the "Memoirs of a Space Traveller" book by Stanisław Lem. Highly recommended to any fan of house automation.

xpil 4y ago

This vividly reminds me of "The Washing Machine Tragedy", a story in the "Memoirs of a Space Traveller" book by Stanisław Lem. Highly recommended to any fan of house automation.

connor11528 4y ago

Amazon will own your healthcare (one medical), your vacuum (irobot), the movies you watch (mgm, prime) and where you get your groceries (whole foods)

wnevets 4y ago

oh no. How long until Amazon implements the house mapping tech iRobot got in trouble for even mentioning? [1] [1] https://www.sciencealert.com/your-roomba-could-be-silently-mapping-the-interior-of-your-home-as-we-speak https://www.sciencealert.com/your-roomba-could-be-silently-m...

DoctorD68 4y ago

FTC says what? Why doesn't AMZN just buy a ride share company already to close the loop on data collection.

deleted 4y ago

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jedberg 4y ago

Here's a tangential thought I just had: One of the main selling points of robot vacuums is that they can work while you're away at work, so your house is magically clean when you get back. Now that a bunch of people work from home, will the usefulness drop? If you're always home, when do you schedule the vacuum to run so it doesn't get in the way or make loud noises during a meeting? Or if you get the wet mopping model, when does it run so the floor has time to dry?

davidn20 4y ago
I WFH for the entire time I had my roborock. The sound is annoying, but I still run it every day. The main selling point for me is I don't have to vacuum.

fezfight 4y ago

Well there goes any reason to ever buy one. Anyone working on FOSS 3D printable robot vacuums?

say_it_as_it_is 4y ago

Oh my god, they're going to use them to sonar the interior of all of our homes.

micheljansen 4y ago
“Check out this chest of drawers that would fit perfectly in that corner over there!”
say_it_as_it_is 4y ago
Looks like others agree: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-05/amazon-s-irobot-deal-is-about-roomba-s-data-collection https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-05/amazon-s-... Shout out to the HN down-voters.

protomyth 4y ago

I really do hope the technology to identify (chemically) what it is sucking up is not available because I can only imagine what Amazon could do with that information (well, other that send it to police without a warrant like Ring videos).

walterbell 4y ago
Macro lens + high frame rate camera + machine learning correlation of motion in wind tunnel?

jonym 4y ago

I guess embedded microphones are the next thing to be added to these. It's for better voice control guys, nothing to see here.

ggregoire 4y ago

How do these cleaning bots handle corners? Do they have a way to reach them or they just skip them?

gnicholas 4y ago

I'm surprised that none of the comments mention iRobot's recent 50% stock decline, 30% drop in Q2 sales, or layoff announcement (10% of workforce). I wonder how this deal would have gone down (if at all) had iRobot not encountered these headwinds.

kodah 4y ago

I am really sad to see this. iRobot's support is second to none in my experience. Their new vacuum that produces maps of the house and has a base station with a bag has been a delight. The parts aren't to expensive, the service is good, and they constantly improve my existing bot. All of this, I'm sure, will go out the window along with a fear that my house will not become a well of data.

fareesh 4y ago

Jordan Peterson voice: Hey Alexa clean my goddamn room

LightG 4y ago

This feels like a mistake unless Amazon have a trick up their sleeves. My experience with Roombas has been awful.

phendrenad2 4y ago

I wonder if this has anything to do with the CHIPS Act. It seems like a good time to look around and see if you can acquire a company and somehow capture some (or more) of that funding.

cmckn 4y ago

I haven't found a reasonable solution for multi-level dwellings; interested in how others address this. If you just have 2 floors, it's reasonable to purchase 2 of these bots; but if you need a third, it starts to feel excessive. In something like a townhouse, with several floors that are individually not that big, for example. Not to mention I still need to clean all the stairs manually, and those are by nature high-traffic. Do folks move their bot to different floors weekly, or something like that?