inb4 SkyBell stops being sold on Amazon.
Amazon to acquire video doorbell maker Ring
31–40 of 135 posts
Re: Amazon to acquire video doorbell maker Ring
#32Amazon and Google -- and Facebook and a handful of others -- seem to be in a never-ending race to learn everything about everyone everywhere: who you are, where you are, what you do, when you do it, and why do do it. Having cameras and microphones in your house and your neighborhood is a small part of that.
And the panopticon grows... I'm not so concerned about Amazon or Google (though Facebook is creepy, even them).
I'm worried about the access that nation-states security teams have distributed across the entire set of poorly secured, 0-day infested monitoring devices everywhere.
20 years ago I laughed at how infeasible Enemy of the State was, but now it seems feasible (with added drones).
Even the "enhance/sharpen" part seems feasible if everything is packing HD/4k feeds.
Re: Amazon to acquire video doorbell maker Ring
#33Ring was on the TV Show Shark Tank, and all the sharks passed on the deal. It was $700K for 10% of the company. And now it sold for more than 1 billion $.
You have the wrong idea about the show. It exists to promote the shark's own businesses and products under the guise of a contest reality show. To keep up the facade, they allow other companies to put their products up for a price, and intersperse a couple of silly products to keep people watching. It's just dressed up advertising, it's not about investing or business by any flip of the coin.
Source?
Re: Amazon to acquire video doorbell maker Ring
#34This sucks...
Ring has been providing subpar service and promises that remain unfulfilled. It was Cleary working on cutting costs to get ready for a sale.
Re: Amazon to acquire video doorbell maker Ring
#35Perhaps a stupid question, but where does the $1bn. valuation come from? Amazon already make hardware, including cloud cameras, would it have been so hard for them to make a doorbell in-house?
Companies generally make these types of acquisitions for two reasons: customers or technology. Since the technology Amazon already has for the most part, they're obviously acquiring them to leverage their customer set (... or prevent a competitor from doing the same).
Re: Amazon to acquire video doorbell maker Ring
#36Amazon now has Blink and Ring. I wonder how soon "You're out of paper towels" and "Your paper towels are on the porch" will come about? Bonus points for "the neighbor kid just stole your package" alert.
They have the ability to unlock your front door, so "your paper towels were replaced on your holder" is a legit option.
Re: Amazon to acquire video doorbell maker Ring
#37I assume Ring will never give the promised HomeKit support now...
Re: Amazon to acquire video doorbell maker Ring
#38What does this mean for existing Ring customers? Considering the privacy implications and the fact that Amazon can/will do a lot more with this data than Ring did, is there a way for Ring customers to opt-out of future integration into the Amazon ecosystem? I imagine there are a decent chunk of Ring customers who would have not purchased the device had it been sold by Amazon in the first place.
>I imagine there are a decent chunk of Ring customers who would have not purchased the device had it been sold by Amazon in the first place.
I have a hard time feeling too much sympathy for these people. The inevitable conclusion for most of these heavily-vc-funded home automation startups is an acquisition by one of the tech giants. If you are boycotting the tech giants for whatever reason, you should therefore be boycotting any startup that might be an acquisition target.
also, if you're putting video cameras in your home that push footage to a server you don't control (or even one that you do) i'm not sure you can call yourself privacy conscious.
Re: Amazon to acquire video doorbell maker Ring
#39Amazon now has Blink and Ring. I wonder how soon "You're out of paper towels" and "Your paper towels are on the porch" will come about? Bonus points for "the neighbor kid just stole your package" alert.
>the neighbor kid just stole your package
Facial recognition is rather trivial and common-place these days I suppose but the association of that face with your neighbor's kid seems to take it a step further into invasive territory.
Re: Amazon to acquire video doorbell maker Ring
#40Ring was on the TV Show Shark Tank, and all the sharks passed on the deal. It was $700K for 10% of the company. And now it sold for more than 1 billion $.
You have the wrong idea about the show. It exists to promote the shark's own businesses and products under the guise of a contest reality show. To keep up the facade, they allow other companies to put their products up for a price, and intersperse a couple of silly products to keep people watching. It's just dressed up advertising, it's not about investing or business by any flip of the coin.
This isn't accurate at all. I know judges and entrepreneurs who have been on the show. For an entertainment TV show, it's pretty darn real.