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

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#681

Post by brendoelfrendo » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 7:18 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #667

dontlikeyoueith wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Miele canister vacuum. I love it. My wife bought the Dyson garbage anyway because she can't ignore her instagram feed.

I don't understand how people deal with cords anymore, and basically I've stopped thinking about those for more than a decade now.

I'm also a Miele canister vacuum owner, and everywhere in my house where I vacuum is within range of a wall outlet. When I'm done, the cord retracts into the vacuum so I don't need to wind it or stow it myself. I guess, for me, that takes care of the issue to a great enough extent that I just never saw an advantage that justified the expense?

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#682

Post by brandensilva » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 7:18 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!

I figured this would happen given how crap Roombas have been since they fired or lost all their engineering talent years ago.

So I went with a roborock since it is superior but completely blocked it from ever communicating outside my home.

Works great, there are plenty of ways to modify roborock vacuums and load up other software even.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#683

Post by knicholes » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 7:18 PM UTC

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…

Sounds to me like we need to figure out how to flash our own custom firmware or do some fun DNS tricks to keep our data to ourselves.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#684

Post by evilduck » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 7:20 PM UTC

keeda wrote: post #635

SoftTalker wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No-name chinese cloners selling on Amazon don't care about patents.

While those patents are not enforceable in China (unless equivalents were also filed in China -- unsure if they would be worth much) they would be when imported to the US. This is one of the reasons the ITC exists, and it played a prominent role during the smartphone patent wars. So at least the US market would be protected from knock-offs.

The smartphone wars were fought among tech giants, not capital intensive hardware startups. The problem with patents is that you need to already be financially successful enough to file them, able to pay to protect them in court, and can float your company's operating costs long enough to see them enforced and rewarded, which may take years.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#685

Post by kensai » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 7:24 PM UTC

Seriously, and it's not intended to troll.

To all those making catastrophical scenarios, how would a Chinese entity start streaming data from your robot cleaner and, more importantly, how will this be a security breach at your home or worse, nation?

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#686

Post by SoftTalker » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 7:24 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #667

dontlikeyoueith wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Miele canister vacuum. I love it. My wife bought the Dyson garbage anyway because she can't ignore her instagram feed.

I don't understand how people deal with cords anymore, and basically I've stopped thinking about those for more than a decade now.

Cordless is nice until the batteries won't charge anymore. Or the charger stops working. Or you forgot to charge it and now want to use it. Or the charging connector gets worn and unreliable. Then you have an expensive battery replacement or other repair or (more likely) you just replace the whole device because it was made to be unrepairable, and now you have several pounds of plastic and e-waste to dispose of.

Dealing with plugging a cord into an outlet is no more burdensome than picking up the socks or shoes before the Roomba wakes up and tries to ingest them.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#687

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 7:26 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#688

Post by margalabargala » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 7:27 PM UTC

rjp0008 wrote: post #598

coldpie wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also would have preferred to keep it in the country, but the fact is that Amazon does more harm and is a larger threat to Americans and your children than China is. Hence "Of those two choices... I pick China." I would love for there to have been more than those two options, but this is where we ended up after decades of not enforcing anti-trust law, thanks in no small part to Amazon.

I would definitely argue the opposite, that China is the larger threat. They want control of Taiwan and are building way more capable hardware than Russia has.

There are threats from without and threats from within.

China isn't going to physically invade the US. They want to take our place as the world's cultural leader and relegate the US to approximately the current state of the UK.

Companies like Amazon want to increase the wealth of the owners at any cost including domestic political capture. They would see the country being run by oligarchs like Russia.

Would you rather live in the UK or Russia?

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#689

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 7:32 PM UTC

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…

If they're taken offline, they stop working.

I think this is a bit of hyperbole. I haven't had my Roomba hooked up to the internet in at least four years. It works fine.

The only thing is that I have to start it by pushing the button on top, instead of using a phone app.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#690

Post by echelon » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 7:33 PM UTC

lvl155 wrote: post #484

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

100%. Amazon actually has a sizable robotics presence in Boston. It would have been great for Boston job market and there are actually a handful of companies based out of MA including BD. You really need a cluster of companies to strengthen an industry. I mean see biotech in Kendall if you need an example. Every time I hear someone applaud China for doing it cheaper and better, you don’t actually know that long-term.…

How do we recover from this?

Five years ago you'd be called sinophobic for suggesting we do something to stop bleeding industries to China. (My wife is Asian ffs, I'm not racist.) Yet we already saw how this had happened to Canada with Nortel, etc.

China wants every industry it can have. If we give up technological salients, we won't be able to get them back. China has so many advantages - manufacturing, chemicals, materials, electronics. They now have better experience than we do with design and engineering.

The outcome of this happening broadly and at scale is that high paying US jobs will disappear and the country will slide into economic stagnation.

You wouldn't hire a robotics or mechatronics engineer in the US. There would only be small bespoke jobs. The vast majority of supply would come from China where everything is both vertically and horizontally integrated. Cheap, fast, better. These career sectors will shrink and atrophy. There won't be enough talent, jobs, or pay to support building new companies, meaning we're dead in the water and that industry is dead to us.

We need to do something fast. It'll be gone within a generation if we don't.

I don't have anything against Chinese people. I just want America to dominate or be competitive in enough key industries to keep us all employed and growing. For our own economic security and insurance.