They were once the pioneers of robotic vacuum cleaning, but iRobot — the company behind the iconic Roomba — is now out of cash and on the brink of bankruptcy. Once a prized acquisition target for Amazon, the deal collapsed after U.S. and EU regulators blocked the takeover. Since then, iRobot’s technology has fallen behind,... Read More
Years of stagnation and underinvestment have left its product lineup dated, while mass layoffs have gutted its development teams.
Patents would have held up this carcass for years and years, preventing anyone from actually innovating and improving on the original design, and keeping the prices bloated. Fuck patents.
It’s like complaining that you got overtaken when you stopped running after the 100m line, when you’re running a marathon.
How do you get to be the Kleenex of robot vacuums and manage to fumble that advantage so bad?
By not enforcing your patents. Just ask TiVo.
Also they spun off the military robots arm of the company into its own business a long while back, so they didn’t really care about this corp anymore.
Nest or Ring would be smart to buy up the carcass of iRobot for their IP, talent ,and customer base. But they probably won’t.
Is nest still a thing? Thought it rebranded to Google cavity search or something.
Doesn’t I robot have the floorplan of all their customer’s homes? That still seems on brand
AFAIK, yes. In the cloud, isn’t it? True, it would be very in brand.
“By not enforcing your patents”
You’re absolutely right. From the article:
Patents would have held up this carcass for years and years, preventing anyone from actually innovating and improving on the original design, and keeping the prices bloated. Fuck patents.
It’s like complaining that you got overtaken when you stopped running after the 100m line, when you’re running a marathon.