Rights Groups To FTC's Lina Khan: Please Kill Amazon's iRobot Acquisition

More than two dozen civil organizations and advocacy groups are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to block Amazon's $1.7 billion acquisition of Roomba maker iRobot. If allowed to go through, the advocates warn the deal could "endanger fair competition" and jeopardize consumer privacy. Gizmodo reports: Fight for the Future, Public Citizen, and Athena were among the 26 organizations that sent an open letter to the FTC's five commissioners on Friday. The groups view Amazon's acquisition of iRobot, which they described as a "competing smart home device business" as an anti-competitive action that could harm the overall consumer technology market. "Amazon seeks to unduly expand its market power by eliminating a competitor through acquisition, rather than through organic growth," the groups wrote. "The company also aims to minimize fair competition by exploiting consumer data not accessible to other market participants." That "consumer data" refers to detailed video footage of customers' homes and floor plans constantly sucked up by iRobot's Roomba and other home devices. That type of data is potentially well worth the $1.7 billion Amazon intends to spend on the company if for nothing else than to determine more useful shit to sell you through its main business. Privacy advocates, however, fear Amazon -- which already has smart devices hooked up in around a third of U.S. households -- could potentially misuse that potentially sensitive data. Critics, including some U.S. senators, warn we've already witnessed a version of this through Amazon-owned Ring sharing user data with police without its owners' consent or a police warrant. "There is no more private space than the home," the letter reads. "Yet with this acquisition, Amazon stands to gain access to extremely intimate facts about our most private spaces that are not available through other means, or to other competitors." While Amazon's recent acquisition attempt is significant, the groups warn Amazon's iRobot deal amounts to a symptom of a larger problem. "Amazon's business model largely relies on acquiring rivals, sometimes in adjacent markets, and then rapidly expanding through anti-competitive predatory pricing while leveraging vast troves of consumer data to grow its overall grip on the economy,a the letter reads. To bolster that point, the groups pointed to Amazon's 2018 acquisition of smart doorbell maker Ring. Within three years, Ring transformed from a successful but growing product to the undisputed king of smart doorbells. That sudden market annihilation, the groups argue, was only made possible through Amazon pushing the product through its "ubiquitous" e-commerce platform at below market price points.

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