1y ago

Amazon terminates iRobot deal, Roomba maker to lay off 31% of staff

www.cnbc.com

Amazon terminates iRobot deal, Roomba maker to lay off 31% of staff::Amazon and iRobot said regulatory concerns made it impossible for the deal to move forward, sending the Roomba makers' shares plummeting.

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1y ago

Amazon and iRobot call off their planned acquisition

www.cnbc.com /2024/01/29/amazon-terminates-irobot-deal-vacuum-maker-to-lay-off-31percent-of-staff.html

51 comments

If it’s any consolation those people would have been laid off no matter what happened. That’s how we do things now apparently
- iRobot said it would focus on margin improvements, reduce spending on research and development, and pause all work on “non-floorcare” products, including its air purifiers and robotic lawn mowers.
  I doubt it. If you are stopping r&d and killing whole product lines, it makes sense to lay off the teams directly tied to those product lines. I'm guessing they needed Amazon to help them break into the market for areas outside of floor vacuums?
  
  Call me a skeptic but I’d be willing to bet small amounts of money that Amazon would absolutely lay some or all of these people off after the initial onboarding.
  
  They should definitely dump air purifiers. What does that have to do with robotics?
  Lawn mowers however seem like a stupid drop, since a lawn is floor adjacent and the market in them is growing.
- Gotta artificially drive the cost of labor down somehow. All those poor folk started getting some wild ideas that they were worth something....
- iRobot had been struggling over the past few years, and now capital is expensive. They were either going to need to sell or cut back in order to right the ship.
- They fired their whole education wing when my startup was just starting to work with them (15 or something years ago). No warning just a month after starting a new project (early stem outreach type program), fired them all.
  So I don’t feel bad for iRobot. Sucks for the employees though.
- Very sustainable
Good news for us Roomba users, not so good news for employees. 😑
- I don’t know if this actually good for Roomba users. Selling to Amazon, and maintaining the status quo are both bad for the user.
  This isn’t a healthy company. It’s a busted company that Amazon was looking to salvage or rehabilitate.
  
  Is it a busted company? I quickly found data for 2009-2022 and they've registered profit for every year till 2022 when they had their first loss. They've been around since the 90s.
Oh, I might consider buying one again now.
- Save yourself the headache and get something that works locally and doesn’t rely on their cloud and app.
  
  True story. I hate all those cloud devices, which can run perfectly locally. And doesn't require a subscription. I even see it back in cars nowadays, stupid subscriptions.
  
  What options are there out of the box? I only know of hacking well known brands and use something like valetudo
  
  Roomba uses local push in HA.
  
  Reasonably sure i can set up local control through home assistant. Haven’t looked too hard but I’ve always liked the featuresets on the roombas and the Amazon connection was the reason I haven’t done too much investigation yet.
- I’ve been much happier with my Roborock than my Roomba. It definitely seems smarter.
  
  Have them fight to the death
Huh I thought it was done a long time ago. Looks like Roomba's back on the menu, boys!
No Amazon does not terminate the deal, the EU did. Because otherwise Amazon will have too much power over the robot industry.
- And, Amazon didn't want to give up the 'mapping everyone's home and tracking them' concept.
  
  That is for sure... I don't trust Amazon for a bit..
- Technically, no, iRobot and Amazon "mutually agreed" to terminate the deal, most likely cause the EU probably wasn't going to approve, but:
  The EU was set to deliberate in mid Feb, so they didn't (yet)
  It's also possible that Amazon used the likely rejection of the EU as an excuse to back out of a deal they didn't want anymore
  I don't know which one it is, but if Amazon wanted to close, they would've been willing to make concessions to the EU to get their approval, rather than backing out.
Gotta layoff workers to save money for stock buybacks.
It's a good thing we gave Amazon Tax CUTS instead of RAISES! Otherwise they may have forced people to lose their jobs!
Naming your robot company iRobot is Nightmare Nexus levels of disrespect
iRobot has rested on their laurels and patent portfolio for years while others (ie Roborock) have lapped their products. Looks like they'll continue to decline into obscurity and count on patent troll lawsuits to survive. BTW, anyone want to buy a POS Roomba i7 that beats the hell out of furniture and baseboards while constantly getting jammed rollers?
- Does it come with a self cleaning base?
  I'll give you $5 plus shipping.
  
  I'll give you $4, minus shipping after you get it.
Why the fuck would you name your robotics company that?
Ya know, when I named my Red Car "Christine" it was a joke and one for my own amusement, if it were a new model of car that I was selling there are a couple of reasons I wouldn't have done that.
- Fyi: This is the company that makes roombas and thats the name people recognize. They where founded as irobot in the 90s and it was clearly copying apple.
  Its almost suprising they didnt sue the irobot movie for its title, being that the original titel by Isaac Asimov spelled it “i, robot”
  
  They where founded as irobot in the 90s and it was clearly copying apple.
  Are you saying the name iRobot is copying Apple? Because iRobot was founded almost 10 years before the first iMac.

51 comments