Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges • Hacker News Board

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#471

Post by atwrk » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

red-iron-pine wrote: post #400

atwrk wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was kind of my point, I don't buy any of these surveillance appliances. But answering as a hypthetical roomba owner: As I am from the EU, this new ownership would actually be better for me. The US already mandates spying with devices like these, and has been caught multiple times doing so already. It is also known to share info with the domestic services, the latter point not being true for China.

the US does not mandate spying with roombas -- wtf are you smoking? China absolutely shares info with all of its national police services, intelligence services, and military. Depending on the company these PLA may literally own some / most / all of the organization. I am not in the US or China, and on balance I am less worried about the Chinese blowing my house up, but don't pretend they're nice, or that they're you…

You have the Stored Communications Act, the Patriot Act, the Cloud Act, FISA, and so on. Most of which don't require warrants if it is about non-citizens. Which is then shared, through Five Eyes and similar agreements, with foreign countries, so a workaround for not needing warrants in the target country. This is what I commented about, data sharing with the services in my country. Of course Chinese intelligence agencies will share info with the Chinese police, but they don't share with police in the EU.

Again, the root problem of course is that there is any data to share in the first place.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#472

Post by DevX101 » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 3:16 PM UTC

fny wrote: post #365

I'm all for antitrust, but it's a shame the Amazon acquisition was blocked.[0] iRobot was in a distressed state then, and immediately laid of 1/3 of staff when the deal fell through. I knew a survivor of that mess. Now this. 0: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/29/24034201/amazon-irobot-ac... 0: https://archive.is/rBn7z

I’m glad it was blocked. Amazon gives law enforcement and ICE access to Ring camera footage. I have no doubt they’d eventually be letting cops spy inside our homes with these vacuum cleaners.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#473

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 3:17 PM UTC

fny wrote: post #365

I'm all for antitrust, but it's a shame the Amazon acquisition was blocked.[0] iRobot was in a distressed state then, and immediately laid of 1/3 of staff when the deal fell through. I knew a survivor of that mess. Now this. 0: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/29/24034201/amazon-irobot-ac... 0: https://archive.is/rBn7z

[deleted]

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#474

Post by krapht » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 3:20 PM UTC

mzhaase wrote: post #146

simonjgreen wrote: post #81

This is the cost of complacency. They were ahead for so long then the likes of Roborock just left them in the dirt. I remember the first time I tried one of the Roborock devices, and until then I have been a long time Roomba user (like, 20 years). I just couldn’t believe how much better it was. And iRobot just stubbornly refused to iterate on their fundamental products.

There is also another thing where quality Chinese products are very cheap compared to western products. Since Chinese engineers are cheaper, they can live with lower margins on their products. A roomba was twice as much as a roborock that was better. Prusa MK4S is 720 EUR, the arguably better Bambu Lab A1 is 260 EUR.

It wasn't labor costs that made the Roomba twice a Roborock, but manufacturing costs. Roomba teardowns basically show that iRobot was just really bad at cost-optimizing their vacuums for mass production.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#475

Post by coldpie » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 3:23 PM UTC

symbogra wrote: post #464

miohtama wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elizabeth Warren is proud of blocking this deal: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/amazon-irobot-deal-collapse-room...

That old bat is the enemy of any kind of US technical progress.

No. Enforcing anti-trust law is critical for healthy markets. Healthy markets support technological progress through competition.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#476

Post by Aurornis » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 3:23 PM UTC

DevX101 wrote: post #472

fny wrote: post #365

I'm all for antitrust, but it's a shame the Amazon acquisition was blocked.[0] iRobot was in a distressed state then, and immediately laid of 1/3 of staff when the deal fell through. I knew a survivor of that mess. Now this. 0: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/29/24034201/amazon-irobot-ac... 0: https://archive.is/rBn7z

I’m glad it was blocked. Amazon gives law enforcement and ICE access to Ring camera footage. I have no doubt they’d eventually be letting cops spy inside our homes with these vacuum cleaners.

So you’d prefer we send access to China? The comment above was pointing out that we blocked the acquisition that would have kept it in the country.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#477

Post by pornel » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 3:24 PM UTC

fny wrote: post #365

I'm all for antitrust, but it's a shame the Amazon acquisition was blocked.[0] iRobot was in a distressed state then, and immediately laid of 1/3 of staff when the deal fell through. I knew a survivor of that mess. Now this. 0: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/29/24034201/amazon-irobot-ac... 0: https://archive.is/rBn7z

Amazon wouldn't have kept the manufacturer alive by making Roombas better, but by making it more expensive for other manufacturers to sell their vacuums through Amazon.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#478

Post by AndrewKemendo » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 3:24 PM UTC

kqr wrote: post #289

cs702 wrote: post #254

According to the Financial Times, Roomba has sold more than 40 million robotic devices, most of them robotic vacuum cleaners.[a] Many of those vacuum cleaners have cameras, can move around on their own, and are connected to the Internet. If they're taken offline, they stop working. Many have microphones too. The new Chinese owner will get control of a network of tens of millions Internet-connected, autonomously mobil…

Our household (and I suspect many with us) bought a Roomba specifically to not give the Chinese government a roving camera in our home. Ouch!

Genuine non snarky question:

Did you weigh data collection, persistence and transferability before purchase and then conclude that the risk/benefit was there?

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#479

Post by vel0city » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 3:25 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #452

prmoustache wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there are tens of millions still in use. Unless you design your house and buy your furnitures taking these roomba into account, they get stuck nearly every where or at the first sock left on the ground by someone in your household. They have a number of wearable most owner will not even want to replace and will start being inefficient rather quickly. Add to that some battery wear and I don't think there…

> The thing is, those robots really don't solve a real problem as vacuuming and mopping are the easiest and quickest job when it comes to cleaning the house. Hard disagree, because vacuuming is something you often need to do daily . Spending 10 min/day becomes over an hour a week. That's a significant chunk. If you have smooth floors, running a Roomba kind of becomes a no-brainer. On the other hand, I only need to du…

I agree with this take, it has been my experience as well. The robot vacuum isn't there so you never need to vacuum, the robot vacuum is there so you can have decently clean floors daily and only need to do the deeper cleaning once a week or so.

But I also get the difficulty when you have a space with lots of larger debris around. The robot vacuum was excellent before kids. Now with little kids that will leave toys and other obstacles all over the place, it requires diligence to pick up after them (and work to teach them to clean up their toys and socks) to ensure the vacuum can be effective.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#480

Post by ToucanLoucan » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 3:26 PM UTC

dpedu wrote: post #455

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am one of those weirdos! I bought a roomba in 2015 and it's still going. Second battery, sixth set of rollers and brush, god knows how many filters. Mine's also a dumb one: no wifi or pathfinding, just boring old "drives around until it smacks into shit" navigation. I gave it googly eyes in 2017 and named it Harold.

I used to have a similar dumb one (Roomba 860 if memory serves) and it would take the same path over and over again in certain corners of my house, which meant my carpet ended up with unsightly wheel tracks on it from the repetition. I don't think it did a very good job vacuuming either, no matter how much it ran, a normal vacuum would always pull a boatload more crud up. It's an interesting idea but it just didn't w…

It's not for hardcore use for sure, not a replacement for a proper vacuuming. I use it in my office/part of my basement, it gets the vast majority of stuff up and keeps the cat hair under control.

I don't know that I'd buy another, especially because the new ones creep me out with all the cameras and such, but as long as I can keep this one running, it does a good enough job.