Technology @lemmy.world Tea @programming.dev 2d ago

iRobot is likely to collapse within 12 months.

www.theregister.com iRobot in dire straits, likely to collapse within 12 months

: We're doomba, say Roomba goombas, unless...

Troubled robot vacuum-cleaner maker iRobot, abandoned by Amazon after regulators effectively doomed the web giant's takeover offer, has warned investors it may not survive the next 12 months.

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Hmm so this entire trick of setting up companies just to be bought by mega corps appears to be not a viable strategy if anti trust law is enforced?

Edit: apparently this company was set up before sell to mega corp craze got kicked off. I don't think changes the thesis but this case study doesn't support it with the strength I suggested

Hmm as if last 30 years of corpo behavior has been essentially to maintain mega corp dominance via captured regulators and legislators

We got the capitalism alright but where is the free market at, daddy?
- Don't worry, the new strategy is to string a company along with talks of a buyout, then when their cash runs out and they declare bankruptcy, to buy all the assets on fire sale.
  
  Owners of the take over target shoulda worked harder and maybe ate less avocado toast?
  
  fire tablet, fire phone, fire sale!
  
  South Coast Boutique? They're having a fire sale?
  
  'member the HP Touchpad? I 'member...
- setting up companies just to be bought by mega corps
  
  iRobot was originally founded all the way back in 1990 and have sold quite a lot of Roomba vacuums, advancing innovation in home automation along the way. I don’t think anyone can ever say that they set up this company for a quick flip corpo pump and dump.
  
  It was originally at up to leech government funding for “weapons research”. I guess I’m old because nobody here seems to remember that.
  
  What's the context for this?
  
  iRobot started off as a defense contractor making mine clearing algorithms or some such vaporware.
  
  Hmm an interesting pivot
  
  Well damn.. How did they run the company into the ground?
  
  Let me guess cheap Chinese robots sold on amazon?
  
  Thank you providing additional context.
  
  Honestly I think they suffer a little from early-mover disadvantage.
  
  “Cheap Chinese” and all the associations that come with that is a little reductive in this case. Roborock vacuums are not actually cheap - they are extraordinarily well-made, featureful, and a good value compared to iRobot.
  
  Decades ago, iRobot probably spent millions in R&D just to arrive at navigation algorithms that were worse than what you can get with open-source libraries today. They also spent the marketing dollars to convince people these robots were safe and effective. They weren’t always, so there were some ups and downs in that.
  
  Nowadays the supporting technologies are all much more advanced (and cheaper) and the market for these robots has been created already and is very robust. Companies like Roborock just have to come in and build a good product and they’ll see much faster returns than iRobot did for all those years. They can go straight to lidar, which was probably prohibitive for iRobot for many years, leading iRobot to invest heavily in other technologies which are now a generation behind.
  
  So in addition to their decades of tech legacy. iRobot is burdened with the expectations of longtime investors who want a big cashout, just as they are getting eaten alive by all this new competition. They pinned their hopes on a big exit and are now holding the bag. It’s not surprising that this all left them in trouble.
  
  Thank you
- The market is “free” to fuck you and everyone you know on the ass.
  
  Didn’t you know that’s what “free market“ means?
  
  I do, in fact, dislike being fucked on the ass.
  
  I like it, myself, but not when it’s a major global multi billion dollar corporation doing it.
  
  The operative word here is consent haha
  
  That is always the operative word. Except for those who don’t can’t and will never accept that that word exists.
  
  Parasite class and their legal persons sure do have a rapist culture as their MO
  
  It’s not capitalism without exploitation.
- oh its free alright. for oligarchs to do whatever the fuck they want.
- You just gotta be big enough that you can buy enough people. FAANG is there (though this is Wild West politics nowadays so who the fuck knows what’s gonna happen). But when you own the people writing the laws to control you… they’re not controlling you.

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