Amazon has grown into one of the largest companies on Earth by dominating online retail, and now it’s using that power to become a staple of our digital lives with products like Alexa, Twitch, and Ring. The company’s latest acquisition could bridge the gap between the digital and real worlds. Amazon is buying iRobot, maker of the iconic Roomba robot vacuums. This deal could give Amazon a huge advantage in its quest to know everything about its customers, but it’s going to suck for customers who care about privacy. And not in the way a vacuum is supposed to suck. 

Roombas have been around so long that the brand has become almost synonymous with robot vacuums. There are plenty of other vacuums out there, but there might not be after Amazon gets done. It’s paying $1.7 billion for the company, and it could sink a lot more money into the operation by selling the hardware at a loss. It wouldn’t be the first time Amazon has used its deep pockets to get hardware in people’s homes and reduce the power of competitors. Amazon regularly uses seller data to undercut the companies using its platform to move products. 

A robot vacuum monopoly is not good for the smart home space, but that’s actually of secondary importance. Many are calling this Amazon’s most dangerous acquisition because of the huge amount of data robots like a Roomba can collect about your home. In order to efficiently clean your space, many modern vacuums have lidar sensors and cameras to create a map of your home. They can learn your floor plan, where you put furniture, and even what your floors are made of. 

And there could be some really interesting benefits to those who have decided to live an Amazon life. For example, the company’s Eero mesh routers could use location and Wi-Fi strength data culled from robot vacuums to create a wireless coverage map and tweak router performance. Alexa-powered Echo devices could also have awareness about which rooms are where to refine commands and media playback. 

However, should you trust Amazon with all that data? iRobot could give Amazon the unparalleled ability to connect your shopping habits and smart home activities with the real world. In an Amazon-Roomba world, the layout and status of your home suddenly become important marketing signals. Amazon could find this data invaluable to target ads and product suggestions like never before. There is definitely a creepy factor here, and people might not realize the kind of access they are giving Amazon when they buy a cleaning robot. The Federal Trade Commission has not yet approved the deal, but there’s little reason to expect they will stand in the way. Like it or not, Amazon is probably about to have robotic, internet-connected sensor platforms in millions of homes.

The iRobot Deal Would Give Amazon Maps

 Inside Millions of Homes


Why is the Roomba company worth $1.7 billion to Amazon? It’s not the dust, it’s the data.



PHOTOGRAPH: ZUKI/GETTY IMAGES

AFTER DECADES OF creating war machines and home cleaning appliances, iRobot agreed to be acquired by Amazon for $1.7 billion, according to a joint statement by the two companies. If the deal goes through, it would give Amazon access to yet another wellspring of personal data: interior maps of Roomba owners’ homes.

iRobot got its start building robots for the US military, but 20 years ago added consumer vacuums to the mix. (It spun off the defense business altogether in 2016.) Those Roombas work in part by using sensors to map the homes they operate in. In a 2017 Reuters interview, iRobot CEO Colin Angle suggested the company might someday share that data with tech companies developing smart home devices and AI assistants.

Combined with other recent acquisition targets, Amazon could wind up with a comprehensive look at what’s happening inside people’s homes. The ecommerce giant acquired video doorbell company Ring in 2018 and Wi-Fi router-maker Eero a year later. Speakers and other devices with AI assistant Alexa can now control thousands of smart home devices, including Roomba vacuums. And Amazon plans to acquire primary care chain One Medical in a $3.49 billion all-cash deal, which if approved would put the health data of millions in its keeping.

“People tend to think of Amazon as an online seller company, but really Amazon is a surveillance company. That is the core of its business model, and that’s what drives its monopoly power and profit,” says 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’s essentially built on mapping the inside of people’s homes seems like a natural extension of the surveillance reach that Amazon already has.”

Amazon declined to respond to questions about how it would use iRobot data, but company spokesperson Alexandra Miller provided a statement that claimed the company had been a good steward of customer information. "Customer trust is something we have worked hard to earn—and work hard to keep—every day,” the statement said.

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Amazon has a track record of making or acquiring technology that makes those concerned with data privacy uneasy. In 2020, Amazon introduced a home security drone, and last month Ring, a company that’s forged partnerships with thousands of police and fire departments, admitted to sharing home video footage with law enforcement without a warrant. Should law enforcement or governments demand access, so much data about people in the hands of a single company poses the threat of being a single point of failure for democracy and human rights, Greer says.

The company already has its own home robot, Astro, which it introduced last fall. At the time, Amazon senior vice president of devices and services David Limp said the company launched the robot with no defined use case. In an interview with WIRED in June, Amazon vice president of consumer robotics Ken Washington said the initial focus is home monitoring and security.

Astro is currently only available by invitation only. Washington declined to share the number of Astro in people’s homes today or when Astro will be made generally available. Since launch, Amazon pushed an update to Astro that allows people to add rooms to a home map without the need to remap an entire home.

Amazon home robots are currently unable to coordinate activity between multiple units, but Washington said climbing stairs and coordination between Astros on multiple floors are part of the product development roadmap. Rather than hope that Astro catches on with a mass audience, the iRobot acquisition would give Amazon an instant home mapping presence at a huge scale.

It’s too early to tell, but the deal could face scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission. Privacy advocates have already been vocal in their opposition, and FTC chair Lina Khan has been deeply critical of acquisitions by Big Tech companies. The five-member commission solidified a 3-2 Democratic majority in May. And Khan herself notably came to prominence after a Yale Law Journal article that reimagined antitrust law—with Amazon as the central focus.

Even without bringing iRobot into the fold, there are few aspects of people’s lives that Amazon does not have access to. It already tracks intimate details like what people eat, buy, watch, read, and the prescription drugs they consume. Soon, it may also know every inch of their homes.

Updated 08-05-22, 10.10 pm EST: This story was updated to add comment from an Amazon spokesperson.


Amazon bought the company that makes the Roomba. 

Antitrust researchers and data-privacy experts say it's 'the 

most dangerous, threatening acquisition in the company's

history'

An Amazon "experience center" in Vallejo, California, on May 8, 2018. 
Elijah Nouvelage/REUTERS


Amazon on Friday said it acquired iRobot, the company that makes Roomba vacuums, for $1.7 billion.

The deal prompted concerns from data-privacy experts and antitrust researchers.
People don't buy a Roomba to have it "spying on the layout of your home," a researcher said.

After Amazon on Friday said it acquired iRobot, the company behind Roomba vacuums, data-privacy experts and antitrust researchers quickly raised alarm, saying the tech giant could use the purchase to vacuum up personal information from inside users' homes.

Advanced Roomba vacuums have internal mapping technology that learns the floor plan of a user's home. The devices can also "adapt to and remember" up to 10 floor plans "so users can carry their robot to another floor or a separate home, where the robot will recognize its location and clean as instructed," press releases by iRobot say. Some models have low-resolution cameras to avoid obstacles and aid in mapping.

"People tend to think of Amazon as an online-seller company, but, really, Amazon is a surveillance company. That is the core of its business model, and that's what drives its monopoly power and profit," Evan Greer, the director of the nonprofit digital-rights-advocacy organization Fight for the Future, told Wired. "Amazon wants to have its hands everywhere, and acquiring a company that's essentially built on mapping the inside of people's homes seems like a natural extension of the surveillance reach that Amazon already has."

Ron Knox, a senior researcher and writer for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance — a nonprofit that gives tech assistance to community businesses — said in a series of tweets after the acquisition was announced that the $1.7 billion deal, the fourth-largest acquisition in Amazon's portfolio, "may be the most dangerous, threatening acquisition in the company's history."

The move, Knox told Insider, is uniquely dangerous for a few reasons: First, Amazon will be acquiring an established market share, not a startup, which he said would cut off competition in a market that already wasn't competitive and could further Amazon's reach. Second, because of the massive amount of data that comes with accessing iRobot's established data sets, Amazon can collect new information through the robots, he added.

"I think this feels really intrusive to people — and it should," Knox told Insider. "Like, when people buy a Roomba, it's because they want clean floors. They don't buy a Roomba to have a little robot inside of your house spying on the layout of your home and whether or not you have a crib in your house or whether or not there are pet toys and a pet bed in a room of your house. So then it can funnel that information to Amazon, and Amazon can push whatever dog-toy ads to you the next time you log on."

Amazon declined to be interviewed by Insider on data-privacy concerns but indicated the company didn't sell consumer data to third parties or use it for purposes customers "haven't consented to."

"Protecting customer data has always been incredibly important to Amazon, and we think we've been very good stewards of peoples' data across all of our businesses," an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Insider. "Customer trust is something we have worked hard to earn — and work hard to keep — every day."


Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer-rights advocacy group, said federal regulators should prevent Amazon's purchase of iRobot, citing concerns over the company's 56.7% market share.

"The last thing American and the world needs is Amazon vacuuming up even more of our personal information," Weissman said in a statement. "This is not just about Amazon selling another device in its marketplace. It's about the company gaining still more intimate details of our lives to gain unfair market advantage and sell us more stuff."

The deal has not been approved by Federal Trade Commission regulators, who could terminate the deal under antitrust laws.

The Roomba deal isn't the only recent Amazon acquisition to raise privacy concerns. The announcement came less than a month after Amazon announced a $3.9 billion deal to acquire One Medical — which prompted worries about privacy because of the nature of medical-data collection.

Ring, the company's security-surveillance doorbell — which partners with thousands of police departments — acknowledged in a letter to Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts last month that it had shared with law enforcement footage taken from 11 customers' residences without warrants, Politico reported.

"When the company that has its cameras and microphones in your speakers, your doorbell, your security cameras tries to buy the company that knows the shape and contents of your home, it's bad in all the ways," Knox said.