It’s acquired a number of companies with that aim, the report said, including the Ring smart security system in 2018 and a year later Eero, a router designed to make it easier for customers to set up smart home devices.Īdding iRobot’s Roomba to Amazon’s offerings alongside Alexa and Ring could lock-in consumers to the company’s smart home products, said Alex Harman, director of competition policy at the Economic Security Project. The 2020 House probe found that Amazon has made significant investments into building out smart home systems based around its Alexa voice assistant. Later Amazon stopped selling the devices to other companies, using them exclusively to supply its own warehouses. The company made a similar pledge with its other major robotics deal - the 2012 acquisition of industrial bot builder Kiva Systems. The acquisition “would put Amazon in a position to disadvantage rivals on the platform and block access to important tools to reach new customers, like buying ads on ,” said Lewis, who led the Amazon section of the 2020 congressional investigation into competition in online markets.Īn Amazon spokesperson said Friday that the company would continue to supply retailers with iRobot products and sell competing devices on Amazon’s retail websites. “Buying what is your biggest competitor should be an antitrust violation.”īeyond that, the deal also could have anticompetitive effects, said Amanda Lewis of the law firm Cuneo, Gilbert & LaDuca LLP. Astro, still in a limited rollout, hasn’t made a splash with consumers.Īmazon is “basically taking out their largest competition in a market they want to dominate,” said Sarah Miller, executive director of anti-monopoly advocacy group American Economic Liberties Project. Amazon introduced its own offering last fall, a three-wheeled device called Astro, which sells for about $1,450. IRobot’s Roomba dominates the smart vacuum market with a 75% market share by revenue in the US, according to industry database Statista. Last week, the agency sued to block Meta’s acquisition of virtual reality startup Within, the first time the FTC has preemptively sought to block a deal by the social networking giant. used loopholes to avoid antitrust scrutiny on hundreds of smaller deals. Khan has pushed the FTC to take a harder look at acquisitions by the biggest tech firms in the wake of a report by the agency last year that found Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon, Apple Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. “Antitrust law has contorted itself where it’s largely feckless” in recent merger challenges where the companies weren’t direct competitors. “I want them to try and challenge these things but I worry about their current evidentiary burden,” said Singer, who has served as an economics expert in antitrust cases. Hal Singer, managing director at Econ One, a litigation consulting firm, said the FTC could have a hard time winning a merger challenge on the deal.
The FTC didn’t challenge Amazon’s purchase of MGM Studios earlier this year, but that was before Khan had a Democratic majority on the commission.Ĭlose scrutiny of Amazon’s iRobot transaction won’t necessarily result in a challenge, and even if the FTC does sue to block the deal, there’s a chance it wouldn’t prevail. The agency will also review Amazon’s $3.49 billion deal last month to buy 1Life Healthcare, the parent of One Medical. as the latest example.Īntitrust experts say the deal is expected to draw a tough review from the US Federal Trade Commission led by Chair Lina Khan, a critic of the e-commerce platform’s market dominance. is barrelling ahead with an aggressive acquisition strategy despite intense antitrust scrutiny in Washington, with its $1.65 billion deal to buy Roomba vacuum maker iRobot Corp.
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