Progressives opposed Amazon’s $1.7 billion bid for iRobot the moment it was announced in August 2022. They claimed without evidence that Amazon would undermine Roomba rivals selling in the company’s online marketplace and use the smart vacuum to spy on American homes. But they mostly worried that the acquisition would make Amazon more powerful.
“Amazon has fully leveraged its monopoly power and is ‘almost universally recognized’ as the leader in warehouse and fulfillment robotics space,” Ms. Warren and other progressives wrote to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan in September 2022. The deal “would open up a new market to Amazon’s abuses.”
The FTC around that time began reviewing the deal. In July 2023 the European Commission opened its own investigation, focusing on dubious concerns that Amazon would favor iRobot over rivals. Yet the U.K.’s competition regulators cleared the deal last year and said Amazon wouldn’t have an incentive to undercut Roomba competitors.
Sen. Warren and Ms. Khan have won a pyrrhic victory. iRobot said Monday it is cutting about 31% of its workforce and research and development spending by “offshoring of non-core engineering functions to lower-cost regions.” iRobot said it will also pause “all work related to non-floorcare innovations.”
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