Twenty-six public-interest groups and civil-rights organisations urged the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to block Amazon’s $1.7 billion acquisition of iRobot, the Roomba vacuum-robot maker.
In an open letter, Fight for the Future, Public Citizen, Athena and other organisations described the iRobot acquisition as anti-competitive. In their view, the deal could harm the consumer-technology market as a whole.
‘Amazon seeks to unfairly extend its market power by eliminating a rival through acquisition rather than organic growth. The company also seeks to minimise fair competition by using consumer data not accessible to other market participants,’ the activists said.
Civil-rights advocates fear Amazon could improperly use detailed video footage of customers’ homes collected by iRobot devices. They say the acquisition would give the tech giant access to ‘extremely intimate facts’ about the most private places, which cannot be gathered by other means.
As an example, the groups pointed to Amazon’s 2018 acquisition of smart-home device maker Ring. Activists contend that in three years the startup had become the ‘king of smart doorbells’ as the tech giant promoted its products through its ubiquitous platform at prices below market.
Activists warned the regulator that iRobot’s Roomba vacuums could follow the same path. They say that if Amazon drives the product toward dominance via anti-competitive pricing and seizes data from the devices, it will further strengthen its monopoly power in the digital economy.
The FTC previously opened a review of the Amazon-iRobot deal to determine whether it violates US antitrust law.
In July, the European Parliament adopted legislative proposals regulating companies in the areas of privacy, algorithms and competition.
In September, the White House laid out six principles for reforming the platforms of tech giants to curb their influence.
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