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Seattle
Amazon is acquiring vacuum-cleaner maker iRobot for around $1.7bn, thereby adding to its collection of smart home appliances, says The Guardian. IRobot’s most famous product is the Roomba, a circular-shaped, robotic vacuum cleaner. The acquisition could give Amazon a “massive foothold in the consumer robot market” thanks to the Roomba’s strong reputation. However, the deal “has privacy campaigners riled up”, says Lex in the Financial Times. “Roombas trundle along the ground… collecting information as they clean, mapping room shapes and furniture.” Nonetheless, “collecting data about the state of America’s carpets does not seem the most dangerous manifestation of the surveillance state”. The spatial data Roombas provide is “less comprehensive than the online purchase information that Amazon already has on 200 million Prime membership shoppers” and less invasive than medical records; earlier this year the e-commerce giant bought subscription healthcare provider One Medical in a $3.9bn deal that gives it access to the group’s 767,000 members. This seems a more pressing matter for
