https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44XYQepBF7g
The patent expiry sealed the deal.
- tbh, I think the Amazon deal doesn't matter much in the long run. The damage had been done earlier.
- why give Bezos any more free money? He's already rich enough.
The existing Roomba revenue stream probably doesn't matter. The expertise or maybe the brand (not a great brand imho) aligns with some company priority.
The point the article is making is that iRobot's bad decisions are the reason the company was failing. Blaming regulators for a poor acquisition outcome may be fair, but they were a very minor part of the outcome.
I bought a top of the line expensive Roomba years ago and ended up switching to neato a year later, because I would just come home and it would be stuck on something.
I now have 2x $150 iLifes and couldn't be happier. They're also imperfect, but they are affordable and simple.
From the article: Under a trade regime overseen by men like Furman, the company offshored production, thus teaching its future rivals in China how to make robot cleaners.
How much did regulation and taxation and red tape play into Roomba's inability to compete?
What sort of VC deals were they shackled by, in order to siphon off the data and abuse it for third party marketing, and other forms of enshittification?
There's a lot that American companies have been held back by. Some of it is actually good, consumer protective and well crafted, but it won't work if you allow other players in the same market to ignore the regulations and restrictions without consequences. Other policy is just stupid and self destructive, and other policies border on malignant, deliberately giving foreign companies significant advantages, directly and indirectly, without any other purpose.
American companies are way too easily forced into a race to the bottom dynamic, resulting in failure and huge wastes of money and effort.
On the other hand, competition is good for consumers and letting Microsoft and Amazon use unfair tactics to crush the competition or their large revenues to just buy up all competition isn't good either. That is part of the problem today in that practically every industry is a monopoly or near total monopoly (maybe there are 2-3 firms colluding). There are no incentives to innovate or keep prices competitive in such a gilded-age system. There was a reason we broke up all the robber barons. There is also the hazard when you have businesses that are so large that they effectively control everything and the government can no longer regulate them. High inflation is at least partly coming from this lack of competition. There is also the issue of the money supply where we degrade our currency to make it easier to service the debt. That is also a really big component here.
The FTC properly weighted known bads more highly than potential bads.
> The FTC didn’t bring a challenge, but nevertheless, in 2024, Amazon and iRobot called off the deal.
The smart thing to do in that environment isn't to push the issue so that years later someone can't write that there wasn't an official challenge. It's to read the room and abandon the deal.
"We were prevented from building a proper Windows phone because we already had such large market share on desktop, and already had an anti-trust against us so our hands were tied"
It's just an argument that creates a Kafka trap
How did they shut it down?
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/20/tech/roomba-amazon-ftc-invest...
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...
Just like you. When it happens to a person we call it "cancer".
I bought a top-of-line Dreame, Roborock, and Eufy recently for our place - we have lots of pets.
The Dreame is easily 10,000x better than Roomba ever was. It never makes mistakes. I'd advocate for Dreame for anyone in the market for a robot vacuum. The app is annoying, but everything else about it is sublime.
Eufy would be better if they'd fix their roller brush design and didn't lean so heavily into making you buy their replacement components. It's designed around buying Eufy refills. The Anker team nails user friendliness and design, though.
Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
I find this article a pretty compelling critique of the extractive incentives of Wall Street and a good argument for government stepping in from time to time to adjust those incentives. Where is the societal good in the engine of capitalism prioritizing short-term extraction over long-term value creation?
(I'm also not sure if putting a significant % of the population out of work will create long term value to society.)
> In the mid-2010s, during Furman’s tenure running economic policy under Obama, the company sold its defense business, offshored production, and slashed research, a result of pressure from financiers on Wall Street.
> Mesdag engaged in a proxy fight to wrest control of the company from its engineering founders, accusing one of its founders and iRobot Chairman Colin Angle of engaging in “egregious and abusive use of shareholder capital” for investing in research.
Yes Roomba sucks at this point. We get it. Thing is, if you slash research... that's what eventually becomes of your product.
And if you dump your defence contracts you may have trouble paying for research.
As you know, Khan’s FTC worried it wouldn’t be able to prevent Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot in court, so instead it dragged out approval, which it never granted, while continuously threatening to block.
Simultaneously, her FTC openly worked with the EU to convince the EU to use its more expansive antitrust regime to get the EU to block the deal. That dragged the shot clock for the deal lower and lower (deals have backend dates contractually agreed to, after which the parties no longer are committed to work towards closing the deal and can walk).
Even as the EU was challenging the deal and the shot clock was approaching zero, her FTC was STILL not granting approval and threatened to block and drag it out another year in U.S. courts, all the way until Amazon threw in the towel.
After the deal collapsed, the FTC celebrated and took credit.
The fact iRobot later failed and was sold to Chinese competitors is directly attributable to that block, as it would otherwise be owned and supported by Amazon right now.
2OEH8eoCRo0•1h ago
lotsofpulp•1h ago
As for the rest of the article, it’s not Wall Street’s fault the government doesn’t pay iRobot enough for research (nor should it).
2OEH8eoCRo0•1h ago
lotsofpulp•1h ago
2OEH8eoCRo0•1h ago
lotsofpulp•1h ago