Amazon terminates iRobot deal, Roomba maker to lay off 31% of staff::Amazon and iRobot said regulatory concerns made it impossible for the deal to move forward, sending the Roomba makers’ shares plummeting.
Good news for us Roomba users, not so good news for employees. 😑
I don’t know if this actually good for Roomba users. Selling to Amazon, and maintaining the status quo are both bad for the user.
This isn’t a healthy company. It’s a busted company that Amazon was looking to salvage or rehabilitate.
Is it a busted company? I quickly found data for 2009-2022 and they’ve registered profit for every year till 2022 when they had their first loss. They’ve been around since the 90s.
every year till 2022 when they had their first loss
Numbers must always go up. Never down.
Especially when interest rates quadrupled.
Oh, I might consider buying one again now.
Save yourself the headache and get something that works locally and doesn’t rely on their cloud and app.
Roomba uses local push in HA.
I didn’t realize that so I just went to check on mine and the integration is errored out lol. A quick look on the forums shows that multiple people are having the same issue. When mine was working, I only had a few options like start and go home so it wasn’t that helpful anyways. The roomba app did update with room mapping abilities but I was never able to get that information into home assistant so my only option was a full clean. Maybe it’s changed since mine stopped working but I can’t wait to get something that’s better supported and put this one upstairs where it only has a few rooms to clean.
Reasonably sure i can set up local control through home assistant. Haven’t looked too hard but I’ve always liked the featuresets on the roombas and the Amazon connection was the reason I haven’t done too much investigation yet.
I’ve been much happier with my Roborock than my Roomba. It definitely seems smarter.
Have them fight to the death
It’d be an easy battle. The last iRobot device I had was a fickle piece of junk that’d error out constantly or ignore virtual walls. I’m on my second Roborock vacuum now and am very impressed with how well they work. I gave my first one away and it’s still working great for the person I gave it to.
Huh I thought it was done a long time ago. Looks like Roomba’s back on the menu, boys!
It’s a good thing we gave Amazon Tax CUTS instead of RAISES! Otherwise they may have forced people to lose their jobs!
Gotta layoff workers to save money for stock buybacks.
Naming your robot company iRobot is Nightmare Nexus levels of disrespect
iRobot has rested on their laurels and patent portfolio for years while others (ie Roborock) have lapped their products. Looks like they’ll continue to decline into obscurity and count on patent troll lawsuits to survive. BTW, anyone want to buy a POS Roomba i7 that beats the hell out of furniture and baseboards while constantly getting jammed rollers?
Does it come with a self cleaning base?
I’ll give you $5 plus shipping.
I’ll give you $4, minus shipping after you get it.
Why the fuck would you name your robotics company that?
Ya know, when I named my Red Car “Christine” it was a joke and one for my own amusement, if it were a new model of car that I was selling there are a couple of reasons I wouldn’t have done that.
Fyi: This is the company that makes roombas and thats the name people recognize. They where founded as irobot in the 90s and it was clearly copying apple.
Its almost suprising they didnt sue the irobot movie for its title, being that the original titel by Isaac Asimov spelled it “i, robot”
They where founded as irobot in the 90s and it was clearly copying apple.
Are you saying the name iRobot is copying Apple? Because iRobot was founded almost 10 years before the first iMac.
Till apple didn’t stat the i- naming scheme till imac in 98.
So irobot at the time really was an original name…
