Tech Brief: Amazon Acquires Mesh Router Startup Eero

If an Amazon Wi-Fi router that keeps all your smart home devices connected has you excited, get ready. Amazon has announced that it's acquiring Eero (stylised "eero"), San Francisco-based maker of mesh-networked Wi-Fi routers, for an undisclosed sum. Started in 2015, Eero has raised US$ 90 million to date in four funding rounds. The development comes at a time when the retail giant has made steady advancements in the smart home space, launching a dizzying array of Echo products since its unveil in 2014.

Aside from selling a vast lineup of Echo-branded devices, it's worth noting Amazon's strategic acquisitions of small startups connected with IoT. It bought the smart doorbell startup Blink in 2017, and followed it up with the purchase of Ring last year, and Eero's buy today indicates how serious is Amazon about extending its dominance in the market. With Amazon already gathering a tremendous amount of information about its users from various Echo-fitted access points around the home to show interest-based ads on Amazon.com, Eero's acquisition certainly gives it deeper access to user data (its privacy policy states that it doesn't track website visits, as does its rival Google Wi-Fi).

Eero, for its part, has tried to assuage some of the privacy concerns. "eero and Amazon take customer privacy very seriously and we will continue to protect it. eero does not track customers' internet activity and this policy will not change with the acquisition," the company tweeted. But if history has taught us anything, it's that these promises can never taken for granted. When Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014, it decisively said it won't be using data from the messaging app for advertising, only to reverse its stance two years later, leading to its founders exit from the company, in addition to inviting regulatory scrutiny in the E.U. as a result.