Excerpt from the article by Katie Schoolov, originally published at CNBC on September 28, 2022
…Amazon says 140,000 products are now compatible with Alexa, although “very few” of those are owned by the company. It acquired video doorbell maker Ring for $1 billion in 2018, just three months later it bought security camera maker Blink for $90 million. Then in 2019, it paid $97 million for a mesh Wi-Fi system called Eero to help connect multiple smart devices in the home.
“Eero was a pivotal acquisition because it gave Amazon this ability to see which devices and appliances are being used. They can see the internet traffic that’s going to every connected item in someone’s house. And that gives you a lot of insights. And I’m sure that some of the insight that Amazon got from that was just how popular and how often Roombas are used,” said Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, one of the advocacy groups that signed the letter to the FTC.
Marja Koopmans, director of Smart Home at Amazon, told CNBC that the data from its devices is only used to improve the capabilities of its interconnected smart home ecosystem.
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