Troubled robot vacuum-cleaner maker iRobot, abandoned by Amazon after regulators effectively doomed the web giant’s takeover offer, has warned investors it may not survive the next 12 months.
Hmm so this entire trick of setting up companies just to be bought by mega corps appears to be not a viable strategy if anti trust law is enforced?
Edit: apparently this company was set up before sell to mega corp craze got kicked off. I don’t think changes the thesis but this case study doesn’t support it with the strength I suggested
Hmm as if last 30 years of corpo behavior has been essentially to maintain mega corp dominance via captured regulators and legislators
We got the capitalism alright but where is the free market at, daddy?
Don’t worry, the new strategy is to string a company along with talks of a buyout, then when their cash runs out and they declare bankruptcy, to buy all the assets on fire sale.
Owners of the take over target shoulda worked harder and maybe ate less avocado toast?
fire tablet, fire phone, fire sale!
The market is “free” to fuck you and everyone you know on the ass.
Didn’t you know that’s what “free market“ means?
I do, in fact, dislike being fucked on the ass.
I like it, myself, but not when it’s a major global multi billion dollar corporation doing it.
The operative word here is consent haha
That is always the operative word. Except for those who don’t can’t and will never accept that that word exists.
Parasite class and their legal persons sure do have a rapist culture as their MO
It’s not capitalism without exploitation.
You just gotta be big enough that you can buy enough people. FAANG is there (though this is Wild West politics nowadays so who the fuck knows what’s gonna happen). But when you own the people writing the laws to control you… they’re not controlling you.
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setting up companies just to be bought by mega corps
iRobot was originally founded all the way back in 1990 and have sold quite a lot of Roomba vacuums, advancing innovation in home automation along the way. I don’t think anyone can ever say that they set up this company for a quick flip corpo pump and dump.
Well damn… How did they run the company into the ground?
Let me guess cheap Chinese robots sold on amazon?
Thank you providing additional context.
Their products require their app, would this effectively turn their devices useless when the servers die?
I know it supports a single button to start cleaning, but I wonder if that will work properly without being able to call home.
Might be time for people to look for alternatives.
It technically still works without the app but it loses features that increase the efficiency of the map, tells it where not to clean, scheduled cleaning, etc.
So basically anything that makes it more useful than just doing it yourself.
Everything that makes it better than a generic copy, yes
You can root a lot of the earlier ones.
The alternatives are Chinese, or vacuum your own floors… Nobody wants to do that
Works fine without the app.
Not if you want to schedule, edit the map, customize routines, etc
It’s still usable, it just reverts to the old school Roombas. Press clean to vacuum. Press dock to return to charger.
(I know I didn’t contribute shit & just complain but) … isn’t it a bit weird how after all this time there arent any good open sauce diy robot kits?
Like, materials, sensors, brushes, filters, batteries, etc are all cheaply available, a basic board could literally be just cut plywood with the rest is the things mounted on top (who even needs a cover?). And ofc one could mount various weapons mod on it.
Go ahead and make one then. Nobody is stopping you from being the first.
… I’m that, my best is what is stopping me :(.
There is https://valetudo.cloud/ for a lot of existing models, it’s about the closest thing we have.
Oh fuck, I~~'m gonna~~ might test this.
I’ve never heard of it before, but the more I read the more I like it.Thx!
Another company squandering their patents and market advantage. Reminds me of TiVo.
I love my TiVo. I had to find someone to repair my current unit because it’s an antenna version. They don’t have/make new antenna versions.
This. I know someone who used to work there. They wouldn’t enforce the patents in China to the point where you could drop in Roomba subassemblies in competitor robots and they would still work…
Any European alternatives?
I rarely use mine, but can I block them from using the Internet and they’ll still work?
I’m glad my old, non-smart one still works fine. It slams into things and says, “Roomba needs help” or something when it eats a sock or wire I missed. But at least it will outlast the company’s servers.
I’m just going to leave this here: https://github.com/awesome-vacuum/awesome-vacuum
I’m pretty sure somebody will buy the data iRobot robots collected during their cleaning time :-)
Well obviously, they need to get into the lucrative back alley robot vacuum cleaner fight rings. Strap on that knife iRobot vacuum, and lets go!
Oof, as an American company the rest of the world is boycotting them too.
Yup, they are toast. I dont think the Americans have realized how much permanent damage Trump has caused.
Nice. Might buy one when it’s on sale for $30
We need decent European alternatives for robot vaccuums.
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Not trying to make this sound like nyah, nyah or anything…
But here’s where I’m glad I never got into that genre of “robotic” assistants. Happy to clean my floors by hand, thank you.
Wonder what kind of illumination this situation might be shining on the current “AI assistant” craze…?? 🤷♂️ 🤷♂️
I’ve got pets and just having the hair off the floors on a regular basis without having to spend 20 min a day hauling a vacuum around strikes me as being a nice labor savings. But I haven’t sprung for one yet.
If cost is the main issue, you can find a refurbished slightly older Eufy model on Amazon for $80, which I would consider well worth it. I have two dogs and I pull a large handful of hair out of my robo-vac every day.
Have dog, considered same.
But, I live alone and don’t bother to vacuum everyday.
Haven’t yet found the cost/benefit to be worth it. 🤷♂️
