Amazon's Roomba Deal Is Really About Mapping Your Home (bloomberg.com) 85
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Amazon.com hasn't just bought a maker of robot vacuum cleaners. It's acquired a mapping company. To be more precise: a company that can make maps of your home. The company announced a $1.7 billion deal on Friday for iRobot, the maker of the Roomba vacuum cleaner. And yes, Amazon will make money from selling those gadgets. But the real value resides in those robots' ability to map your house. As ever with Amazon, it's all about the data. A smart home, you see, isn't actually terribly smart. It only knows that your Philips Hue lightbulbs and connected television are in your sitting room because you've told it as much. It certainly doesn't know where exactly the devices are within that room. The more it knows about a given space, the more tightly it can choreograph the way they interact with you.
The smart home is clearly a priority for Amazon. Its Echo smart speakers still outsell those from rivals Apple and Google, with an estimated 9.9 million units sold in the three months through March, according to the analysis firm Strategy Analytics. It's complemented that with a $1 billion deal for the video doorbell-maker Ring in 2018, and the wi-fi company Eero a year later. But you still can't readily buy the Astro, Amazon's household robot that was revealed with some fanfare last year, is still only available in limited quantities. That, too, seemed at least partly an effort to map the inside of your property, a task that will now fall to iRobot. The Bedford, Mass.-based company's most recent products include a technology it calls Smart Maps, though customers can opt out of sharing the data. Amazon said in a statement that protecting customer data is "incredibly important." Slightly more terrifying, the maps also represent a wealth of data for marketers. The size of your house is a pretty good proxy for your wealth. A floor covered in toys means you likely have kids. A household without much furniture is a household to which you can try to sell more furniture. This is all useful intel for a company such as Amazon which, you may have noticed, is in the business of selling stuff.
The smart home is clearly a priority for Amazon. Its Echo smart speakers still outsell those from rivals Apple and Google, with an estimated 9.9 million units sold in the three months through March, according to the analysis firm Strategy Analytics. It's complemented that with a $1 billion deal for the video doorbell-maker Ring in 2018, and the wi-fi company Eero a year later. But you still can't readily buy the Astro, Amazon's household robot that was revealed with some fanfare last year, is still only available in limited quantities. That, too, seemed at least partly an effort to map the inside of your property, a task that will now fall to iRobot. The Bedford, Mass.-based company's most recent products include a technology it calls Smart Maps, though customers can opt out of sharing the data. Amazon said in a statement that protecting customer data is "incredibly important." Slightly more terrifying, the maps also represent a wealth of data for marketers. The size of your house is a pretty good proxy for your wealth. A floor covered in toys means you likely have kids. A household without much furniture is a household to which you can try to sell more furniture. This is all useful intel for a company such as Amazon which, you may have noticed, is in the business of selling stuff.
How smart are the robots? (Score:2)
Re:How smart are the robots? (Score:5, Informative)
Roombas won't do anything offline. They die when AWS dies.
Re:How smart are the robots? (Score:4, Insightful)
Roombas won't do anything offline. They die when AWS dies.
Thank you for clarifying that modern vacuums aren't the only thing that become fucking worthless when the internet goes down.
Internet addiction. If you think it's bad now, just wait until your house can't shut the fuck up about it.
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Well. I think I have no a single device in my home that becomes useless if the Internet (or AWS or another vapor provider) fails. And I see absolutely no reason to get any of those. Apparently, that makes me kind of an outlier. Incidentally, my phone has a removable battery and my Internet is all wire-based.
Re:How smart are the robots? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well. I think I have no a single device in my home that becomes useless if the Internet (or AWS or another vapor provider) fails. And I see absolutely no reason to get any of those. Apparently, that makes me kind of an outlier. Incidentally, my phone has a removable battery and my Internet is all wire-based.
While you see absolutely no reason for "smart" appliances, I see absolutely no reason you'll sustain the luxury of choice.
And makers are proudly listening to the 99% who are called The Product. You couldn't pay them enough to give a shit about your opinion on the matter.
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Actually, I can. Markets are large enough to support vendors catering to smaller user groups. That is why my smartphone is both current and has a replaceable battery. Or why I can and do buy my PCs in components.
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Well. I think I have no a single device in my home that becomes useless if the Internet (or AWS or another vapor provider) fails.
You're not married to someone who uses Fecebook I see.
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Well. I think I have no a single device in my home that becomes useless if the Internet (or AWS or another vapor provider) fails.
You're not married to someone who uses Fecebook I see.
Good point.
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Well. I think I have no a single device in my home that becomes useless if the Internet (or AWS or another vapor provider) fails.
You're not married to someone who uses Fecebook I see.
Saying someone is "using" Facebook is like labling a 3-pack a day habit a "hobby".
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Thank you for clarifying that modern vacuums aren't the only thing that become fucking worthless when the internet goes down.
To be fair, we're at the point where there's no reason to treat internet different from any other essential utility. Much of my house becomes worthless too during a power outage. The difference is that this year I've had a power outage, but not an internet outage (except of course that my modem had no power).
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Re:How smart are the robots? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is false. I have several Roombas. They lose some features (remote control and room mapping--I think you can use the maps fine withot internet once they're made) when the Internet is down, but they run fine. I believe you do have Internet connection when first setting them up.
Moot anyway, Amazon will fuck it up.
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I have Comcast. If my Roomba required functioning internet, it'd be useless.
As you said, I imagine some of the doohickies in the app break like the mapping, but when I fire off my shortcut to start the device, it starts.
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it just bibles around randomly.
Sounds like one of my flock.
Re:How smart are the robots? (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm not sure. It's pretty dark in here. You may be eaten by a Grue...
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It quickly exhausts its supply of the letter 'b', and ceases to be a Roomba.
Dumb (Score:2, Insightful)
The idea that Amazon is gonna get a bunch of valuable Matadata from Roomba devices is dumb. If that’s really what Amazon is thinking that they are also dumb. More than likely they simply bought them because they know how much electronic vacuuming market is worth and they have the ability to remove competitors from search results.
Re:Dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not agree. There is probably tons of things you can derive from home-geometry. Remember it is all about ad-targeting and customer profiling these days. Of course, they can likely do both things.
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I think that is correct. Some companies like Amazon have learned how to play the statistics. They don't have to map every owner's house, only some percentage. And they don't need to find useful every bit of data the device returns, they only need some portion of it. And they can get out of any privacy concerns by claiming the data is noisy and easily defeated. They only need some portion of it to be good.
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Exactly. They may also find some surprising correlations when they correlate with search and buying and browsing history. That is one thing ML (often falsely named "AI") is actually good for.
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Wow, nice move (Score:5, Insightful)
Turns out your living room is only 11'x15'? But you do have two end tables next to your small-ish sofa. Great, turns out these lamps are great for you as they provide good light for a smaller sized room. But tis other customer with a large house and a 18'x20' great room? Maybe you'd like these floor lamps instead which are much better at brightening large rooms.
They get all that data to understand people's living spaces, and most importantly that data pays for itself because it's acquired by people paying for the Roomba.
As an aside, I will be turning off my Roomba now and going back to my Dyson hand vacuum.
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Meh, I never see ads anyways.
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I will be turning off my Roomba now and going back to my Dyson hand vacuum.
Got to wonder... isn't this data already sitting on iRobot's servers?
Re:Wow, nice move (Score:5, Interesting)
But yes, it's entirely possible that iRobot was mapping our homes already.
Re:Wow, nice move (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't access bloomberg, but nothing in the summary indicates there is any substance to the article whatsoever.
The idea of estimating your potential purchases from a roomba-derived metric of the size of your home, for example, is idiotic. Amazon knows very well how much you spend at amazon. Or, a credit report would be almost infinitely more informative.
Re:Wow, nice move (Score:5, Informative)
And you clearly have never worked in consumer marketing. There's a LOT more to marketing to consumers beyond customer spend and credit reports; Consumer Insights [usertesting.com], or how customers use your products and why they buy is critical to get the most out of marketing and customer acquisition expenditure and is both the hardest data to get and by far the most valuable when it ocmes to marketing. Understanding how people use Amazon stuff in their home is critical to better marketing, ad placement and expenditure.
Target knew a girl was pregnant [time.com] before she told her parents just by alogorithms that monitored her browsing history; now add how people use the product? Where it sits? How often it's used? Even if it makes Amazon 1% more effective at marketing, or even .1%, at thier scale that's billions in better revenue generation.
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Smart maps have been around for a while longer than that; I would have to check how long I've owned my i7, but it's been several years. A relatively new feature that speaks to the power of the mapping is that it also maps the location of WiFi connected devices. So it knows about what other smart devices I have in my home, which seems like a nice piece of information for someone interested in marketing to me.
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Target knew a girl was pregnant [time.com] before she told her parents just by alogorithms that monitored her browsing history;
And now, so will the Brown shi... er... police who seek to ensure she stays pregnant. Just because you can collect the data doesn't mean you should. Nor does the collection made today prevent you from suffering the consequences years from now.
But hey, some jackass made money so who gives fuck amiright?
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Whatever this January thing is, it's not the introduction of home mapping.
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If you can convince some marketing exec somewhere it is not idiotic, it's a good idea.
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As an aside, I will be turning off my Roomba now and going back to my Dyson hand vacuum.
Look to the left and right of you. They are the reason this action amounts to you pissing directly into a strong wind and calling it a refreshing afternoon shower.
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This is probably more about their robot sentry/drone thing that is supposed to navigate around your house so you can check stuff remotely.
If all they wanted to was to know the size of your dwelling, that data is already available for purchase from satellite imagery companies. They have been using machine vision to map buildings to addresses, and then estimate the size of the building.
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Ok, I'm a network engineer so it's easier. I have a Ubiquiti system that I use completely isolate devices. They literally can't talk to each other. Some of the smart home devices that have to interact, like the switches and stuff have unique names, but they have zero relevancy to what a normal would name things. Example: The Control4 system is only used for audio/entertainment devices so that's on a private wired/wireless VLAN. Tho
Way to chop future sales (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a roomba 760. Dumb as a fencepost. No wifi. no bluetooth.
No batteries, either -- they've gone flat, and I've not bothered with the replacement.
I can do the house faster with my ancient panasonic canister, and the one room carpet gets the shark with beaterbar.
Sorry amazon, not interested in interconnected anythings for my house. The fridge doesn't need to know that the A/C just started, the A/C doesn't need to know that the fridge is low in mustard and cheese, and the goddamned floor-sucker doesn't need to know that I left my shoes in the foyer. Again.
And ffs, what goes on in my house stays in my house. That's why there's no cameras in the house. Outside facing out, sure. Inside facing in.. never.
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Meh, I forgot the camera(s) most of us have hanging about anyway. Phone? Tablet? Yep. I got those. I bet you do too.
We are in a panopticon of our own making. Soon your own toaster will rat you out to your insurance because you eat too many bagels.
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I can do the house faster with my ancient panasonic canister, and the one room carpet gets the shark with beaterbar.
Actually, my Neato cleans the house faster than I can because it does it and I don't have to. I have nice clean carpets and it took zero amount of my time.
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I can do the house faster with my ancient panasonic canister
If you were racing your roomba then you were definitely using it wrong. The goal of roomba was never to clean your house faster than you could do it yourself.
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Small house. 800-ish sq ft. Not a race. To let Roomba do the carpet in the cinema, for example, still requires me to remove all the furniture. To do the living room I have to put the barriers up so it doens't drift where i don't want it.
If I have to go through all that trouble, might as well use a real vacuum with real suck. Or a broom.
The one room the roomba was really good with was the bedroom. Due to ikea furniture I picked, roomba had no issue with that room.
Hopeless in the music room because shag
FER WHAT? (Score:3)
HUH?
Sorry, channeled Shoresy there for a second.
But, seriously, as much as I believe it, because, let's be honest, they'd map yer gradma's bra if they thought it'd lead to a potential profit, what, exactly, do they plan to gain from this? Where's the marketing bump from mapping out a few rectangular blobs of space in a house? Are the execs so stupid that they believe every empty space is a potential place to put future Amazon product? Do they daydream of an entire world filled with hoarders so obsessed with hoarding that they stuff their little living areas ne, warehouses full of Amazon branded trash product?
I mean, yes, Amazon has proven that they want all the data, all the time. But what the heck are they gonna do with a map of our homes? The only real profit possibility is selling those maps to thieves. Hmm. Ah, there we go. Found the profit potential!
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That's not how big data works. You ask the computers to crank out some new cohort analysis that includes your newfound spring of data, and you'll undoubtedly find something that looks statistically significant. Instant promotion. Just include some charts in your powerpoint presentation to leadership, but remember that Bossman likes it most when the line on the chart goes up and to the right, but sometimes intersecting lines are okay too.
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HUH?
Where's the marketing bump from mapping out a few rectangular blobs of space in a house? Are the execs so stupid that they believe every empty space is a potential place to put future Amazon product? Do they daydream of an entire world filled with hoarders so obsessed with hoarding that they stuff their little living areas ne, warehouses full of Amazon branded trash product?
They don't even necessarily know yet what they will do with the data. When massive personal data gathering was still in its infancy, I'm pretty sure that notions of what they would do with all the data were pretty hazy. But look at it now - it's a huge industry that basically prints its own money.
Here, Amazon may be like early Bitcoin miners who had no idea where the market would end up, but made minor speculative bets that paid off big. The cost to Amazon of collecting that data is marginal. The spying rob
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Just imagine how useful it could be for house robbers who have capable hackers in their midst. ;)
So they're going to give away Roombas for free? (Score:3)
If it's *really* about mapping your home, it only follows that they would give these things away.
No? Oh so I guess they don't *just* want to map your home, they also want to make a profit selling Roombas.
Amazon has long had a "smart home" line of products. Roomba fits nicely into that lineup.
I don't know how far you can go with this room-mapping motivation, there are lots of other motivations at play here. Sure, they might *also* want to map your home, but not sure it's the *primary* motivation.
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If it's *really* about mapping your home, it only follows that they would give these things away.
No, it doesn't necessarily follow at all. The data being gathered is valuable, but perhaps it isn't valuable enough to justify giving away the Roombas. Also, maybe willingness and means to buy are regarded as qualifiers for whose data is most valuable.
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It was the Bloomberg article that made the case that the purchase was "really" about mapping your home, not me. All I'm saying is that it's (as always) more complicated than that.
Why give your data away for nothing? (Score:2)
Did I just compare Amazon to a child predator? Yes, yes I did, because when you collect data on mass with no rea
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Hell, what happens if your doorbell records me going for a walk, and walking in front of your house?
What happens if I put my DSLR on a tripod and aim it out the front window, and set it to take time-lapse photos of the sidewalk, then upload the ones with you in them to Facebook, Nextdoor, and my police department's Internet portal? Nothing is what happens, aside from possible impotent outrage on your part. As has been pointed out countless times on Slashdot, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy when you're out and about in public.
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"no reasonable expectation" -- true, in the country known as the United Stinks. In many European countries, there actually are rules against setting up surveillance that records outside of one's own property, even in "public space."
https://www.expatica.com/pt/ge... [expatica.com]
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I'm skeptical (Score:2)
I'm pretty skeptical about Amazon using Roomba data for anything useful. I have a ~3 year old Roomba, and at least from what it shows you in the app, the data it collects is pretty minimal. You get a 2D outline of the areas it covered. That's it.
Could a future, super-Roomba get enough hi-res images to do some AI object recognition on them? Maybe, but existing Roomba vacuums are not going to be doing this. I'm happy to keep using my Roomba for now. Nothing else can keep up with the dog hair so easily.
- Necr
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"opt out of sharing the data" (Score:2)
What does that mean ? Is it that the data will not be shared with Amazon or that the data will not be shared by Amazon with other companies ?
Even if you opt out do you trust Amazon to honour that or, perhaps, reset the option with some update that you will not notice ?
Size of home and wealth (Score:1)
The size of one's home has very little correspondence to one's wealth.
From 12 dudes sharing a frat, to a Texas 1 acre estate, to a NYC studio apartment, to a Midwest bungalow, the wealth to home size ration is all over the fucking place.
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Of course the real question is... why?
Wealth data is *much* easier to acquire than trying to model home layout as seen by a vacuum (which isn't even an accurate home layout) for the likes of Amazon. This is just conspiracy theorist shite.
How come (Score:1)
Bullshit article by a conspiracy theory reporter (Score:1)
He has no idea WTF amazon's "real" reason is, but he's happy to make something up because why the fuck not.
"What Amazon really wants is your floorpan so they can tell 911 responders your house layout, so they can rescue you more easily."
Look, see what I did?
Old news (Score:2)
Roomba has been known to map homes of its users for years. What's new?
means to an end (Score:2)
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Sounds kinda like Amazon has some information-sharing agreements with 3-letter agencies so they can can spy with impunity and not have to worry about sidestepping privacy laws. Pretty clever TBH
Well, Bezos is on the Pentagon's advisory board [geekwire.com], so who knows what other government agencies he's cozied up to?
spying (Score:4, Informative)
Amazon will do anything to spy on you, for advertising.
Again, this should be illegal. (Score:3)
It should be illegal to collect this kind of data from customers. I'm not sure if that's what they're doing or not but this definitely is too much data for them to have. They're not going to be responsible about it, I think that's been demonstrated.
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Who are you to decide what data I want to share?
My Roomba maps my house. It has for years. It was made clear that this is done off of the device. I like the feature.
You can make it illegal to abuse collected data, but making it illegal for people to consent to giving data is ridiculous.
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Absolutely. And as I said imagine house robbers gang+capable hackers having a go at it. No data is safe on the Internet.
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So no, not absolutely.
Data should be collected with consent only (which it is).
People like you shouldn't be wondering how you can ban features that other people use, and gave informed consent on. It's not your fucking problem.
Let's try an experiment... (Score:2)
Step 2: Arrange pillows on the floor, in the shape of a human body.
Step 3: Let the Roomba do its thing, and wait to see what happens.
And you guys complain about Chinese video surveill (Score:2)
We got appliances and gadgets that track our every move, virtual assistants that record and stream what we say 24/7, and robot vacuum cleaners that map the layout of our homes and share it with everyone else (don't trust when they say you can opt out) . We almost got a game console that could measure our pulse and body temperature, count how many people were in front of it, and stream it to the NSA, just because it could (Original XBox one with Kinect and mandatory in
I'll stick with my "dumb" 500-series (Score:2)
Why does your vacuumbot need to make a map at all? My old Roomba just follows a random pattern, which works fine. It doesn't matter if it takes a few minutes longer to clean the floor, because it's a robot. It does the work while I am out, and is finished the job and back on its dock recharging when I return. It seems to me that a "smarter" robot that makes maps would always be one step behind and it would have to update its map every time a chair is moved (which is like, every time the chair is used.) Even
Hell. NO (Score:2)
shoelaces (Score:2)
my dog likes shoes, he drags them around the house, builds a nest. The robot vac finds them on the floor and chokes on the laces.
so now maybe roomba can offer a "find my missing shoe" feature, and save me a few trips around the house cursing at the dog
Just keeping their word (Score:1)
Amazon knows you have children (Score:2)