Amazon buys iRobot. A “smart” decision
On paper, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that Amazon has decided to acquire a company like iRobot, responsible for such a successful product as the Roomba cleaning robot. In recent years, Jeff Bezos’s company has been gaining a good arsenal of smart home-focused companies. In 2018 they bought the digital doorbell and alarm company Ring for about 1,000 million dollars. Subsequently, Amazon Barely a year later, they would repeat the move in eero, a Wi-Fi networking company that Amazon has transformed to create its own mesh networks for connected homes. The future of Amazon goes through Alexa, and acquiring different companies to make its ecosystem more attractive seems quite sensible.
However, there are already those who suggest that iRobot purchase may have other intentions. This debate is not new, as there was a similar one when Zuckerberg bought WhatsApp. The dangerous thing at that time was not that the owner of Facebook took over the leading instant messaging company, but rather the possibilities of crossing data between WhatsApp and the rest of the companies that he had in his possession.
Will Amazon use iRobot to get to know us better?
With iRobot, Amazon has bought much more than just a company that makes cleaning devices. The most conspiracy theorists of the Internet forums directly consider that iRobot is nothing more than a mapping company. And it is that, there are many companies that manufacture cleaning robots —and some equal or even exceed the Roomba—, but no other has as much information about its clients as iRobot.
Amazon already knows the number of lights you have in your rooms, your television consumption habits, your musical tastes and even what you usually put each week on the shopping list. Now, you will also be able to know the design of your house without having to consult the cadastre. And the thing can go a little further. With the information collected by the Roomba, Amazon can get to know us a little better, since it will know how often we clean our house – or how quickly we dirty it. They will also be able to better segment advertising and how to promote their services thanks to the information that the robot collects. If you have little furniture at home, you may be renting or minimalism is your thing. If your floor is full of obstacles, you almost certainly have children. And if the robot keeps getting stuck, it will assume you have a long-haired pet.
A priori, much of this data is already known to Amazon thanks to Alexa, but the purchase of iRobot can be a further step to improve the accuracy of that data. As always, it is better not to be alarmed, because iRobot is just one more piece in the huge puzzle that is Amazon, and its purchase is no more dangerous than any other giant company has made.
