Open Markets Urges European Commission to Investigate Amazon’s Planned iRobot Takeover
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, February 14, 2023
CONTACT: Max von Thun, vonthun@openmarketsinstitute.org
“Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot is straight out of its well-honed playbook of buying out promising rivals instead of competing on its own merits.”
BRUSSELS -Today the Open Markets Institute, alongside partner organisations Foxglove, the Balanced Economy Project and SOMO, has made a detailed submission to the European Commission calling on it to review Amazon’s proposed acquisition of home robotics firm iRobot.
The submission highlights our serious concerns around the acquisition, which would give Amazon a dangerous foothold in the nascent market for smart home devices. It would not only undermine competition in home robotics, but more importantly give Amazon access to iRobot’s two decades worth of user data, which it could use – drawing on its considerable capabilities in AI and data analytics – to increase its dominance in both existing and untapped markets. Amazon would have the incentive to bundle and integrate iRobot’s devices, such as the popular Roomba, with its other products and services (such as Prime and Alexa) to reinforce user ‘lock in’, and to limit or degrade interoperability with rival offerings.
Giving Amazon – which received the highest fine ever issued under the GDPR for data protection breaches – access to such sensitive data (including maps and photos of people’s homes) would also have grave implications for user privacy. iRobot itself does not have the best privacy track record, with intimate images taken by iRobot devices in people’s homes recently leaking onto social media.
Based on these concerns, our submission calls for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP) to launch an in-depth investigation of the takeover, including working with data protection authorities to review its privacy implications. Based on publicly available data, we are confident that the deal meets the thresholds for notification under the EU Merger Regulation.
“Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot is straight out of its well-honed playbook of buying out promising rivals instead of competing on its own merits. Smart devices are becoming ever more present in our homes, and it is imperative that they are not all designed and controlled by one company” said Open Markets Institute Europe Director Max von Thun. “Instead of entertaining complex behavioural remedies that are difficult to monitor and enforce, we urge the Commission to seriously consider blocking the acquisition outright.”
Read the submission here.
Open Markets has published extensively about the illegal and deceptive business practices Amazon uses to extend its monopoly power, squash its competitors, and squeeze its workers and replace workers with contractors in order to maximize profit, including two major reports: “Eyes Everywhere: Amazon’s Surveillance Infrastructure and Revitalizing a Fair Marketplace” (2021) and “Eyes Everywhere: Amazon’s Surveillance Infrastructure and Revitalizing Worker Power” (2020). Most recently, Open Markets Institute filed an amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Amazon.com Inc in support of the District’s appeal.
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The Open Markets Institute is a team of journalists, researchers, lawyers, economists, and advocates working together to expose and reverse the stranglehold that corporate monopolies have on our country. Learn more at www.openmarketsinstitute.org.