[NEWS] - Amazon buys Eero

[sfx2000]

Amazon to Acquire eero to Help Customers Better Connect Smart Home Devices

Amazon announced today that it has signed an agreement to acquire eero, a company that offers products and services for high-performing, reliable, and simple home WiFi

SEATTLE & SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 11, 2019-- Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and eero today announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire eero. eero’s home mesh WiFi systems set up in minutes and blanket every room of a customer’s home in high-performing, reliable WiFi. eero is already delighting Amazon customers with its products and services, as indicated by eero’s 4.6-star product rating on Amazon.com.

Full press release

 

[CrystalLattice]

Expensive new. Cheap on ebay. Easily hacked. Head piece would go well with lennar-amazon network, but boring. Expect amazon to spy on users. Probably good for amazon, bad for power users

 

[mackworth]

Expensive new. Cheap on ebay. Easily hacked. Head piece would go well with lennar-amazon network, but boring. Expect amazon to spy on users. Probably good for amazon, bad for power users

Easily hacked?

 

[thiggins]

Expect amazon to spy on users.

Amazon already has plenty of customer data via its website and Alexa products. I don't think they need to buy a Wi-Fi systems maker to get user data.

More likely they are looking for technology to build combination Alexa/WiFi mesh systems.

Newell/First Alert bought Luma. Amazon now buys eero. Comcast has all but purchased Plume. That about takes care of the scrappy little mesh Wi-Fi startups. Startups can innovate in this space, but achieving scale to survive requires big money available only to big companies.

As service providers take more ownership for the WiFi performance of their systems, it will be tougher for traditional consumer router companies to survive. Linksys has already fallen. They won't be the last.

 

[sfx2000]

More likely they are looking for technology to build combination Alexa/WiFi mesh systems.

Exactly - it is a platform play for Amazon...

Linksys has already fallen. They won't be the last.

Not so sure about it - the Linksys folks are working hard to stay relevant, and Belkin/Foxconn have pretty much let the Linksys team approach the market as they see fit. That group has been through a lot - from Cisco to Belkin, and now Foxconn - but they continue to release product that is consistent with the Linksys brand over the years...

 

[thiggins]

the Linksys folks are working hard to stay relevant

I don't really agree. They have been silent on AX announcements and nothing much to say or show at CES. I think they are fading fast.

 

[sfx2000]

I don't really agree. They have been silent on AX announcements and nothing much to say or show at CES. I think they are fading fast.

I wouldn't count them out - Linksys has direct lines to QCA and Marvell - both of which have 11ax silicon, and the ARMv8* cores to back it up... anyways, the Linksys Group seems to always find a way...

* QCA - Falkor, Qualcomm's server grade core
* Marvell - ThunderX2 - which is ex-broadcom Vulcan, ex-Cavium

If folks were to worry about the future of 11ax - I would be concerned about Broadcom - as ex-Avago purchase, they've been generally phoning it home with pre-Avago development, and they sold off most of the relevant silicon to Cypress for device side. The Avago/Broadcom team is more focused on short term gains for shareholder, so R&D is going to take a back seat as we go deeper in to 11ax/WiFi6

 

[Dave in NM]

Amazon's found another way to creep into our homes, spy on us, and steal our privacy.

 

[Phasenoise]

I actually suspect they aren't going to do active spying with the actual networking aspects.

I DO fully expect future eero models to come "Alexa enabled" with each unit having a speaker/mic, and of course THAT aspect is just privacy hell. Too many "oh, our bad, it was always listening" incidents have occurred.

Hopefully they'll still offer models without that. It is really nice stuff right now which is fantastic "buy for the in-laws and they can actually set it up" material.

 

[RogerSC]

Not paranoid enough to believe that Amazon is listening to all Alexa's all the time and getting information from it. Don't have Alexa and don't want it, but I sincerely doubt that there's enough internet bandwidth in the world to accommodate all the data from all the Alexa's out there, much less the software to do that kind of 24/7 analysis on all that data. Yes, it's always listening at your house, for it's wakeup phrase. But it isn't always sending data to Amazon...Not saying that there haven't been incidents due to Alexa always listening for it's wakeup word, but that's one of the reasons why we aren't interested in it.

I'm keeping and using my eeros until I find out that Amazon is somehow using the data that it gets from my networks. Eero has said that they don't do that, I trust them, as naive as I am. Amazon needs to earn that trust as well...I don't believe that they bought eero for the network data, and I would not enable an Alexa feature.

 

[Phasenoise]

I'm keeping and using my eeros until I find out that Amazon is somehow using the data that it gets from my networks. Eero has said that they don't do that, I trust them, as naive as I am. Amazon needs to earn that trust as well...I don't believe that they bought eero for the network data, and I would not enable an Alexa feature.

That's exactly my standpoint as well. If they do go evil, then I'll move to something else.

But until then, I'm still on board with this really solid bit of kit. They really do have an unbelievably flexible system and has not once ever caused any problems. I have a full family of people and wireless devices in my (oddly shaped) house - and a few sturdy mesh points just solved all my problems with zero downtime, ever. I am loathe to move away from such a system.

 

[sfx2000]

I'm still on board with this really solid bit of kit. They really do have an unbelievably flexible system and has not once ever caused any problems. I have a full family of people and wireless devices in my (oddly shaped) house - and a few sturdy mesh points just solved all my problems with zero downtime, ever. I am loathe to move away from such a system.

Same here - eero was a product of a lot of folks that were involved with Apple's Airports

Let's see where things land...