Amazon announces it's acquiring mesh WiFi company eero to make it easier for customers to set up and connect their smart home devices
not hard to imagine a world where Alexa is baked into Eero in the future. http://press.aboutamazon.com/ ... http://twitter.com/... Jay Peters / @jaypeters : @Techmeme This buy makes a crazy amount of sense for Amazon. Wonder if there will be an Alexa-powered router? “Alexa, what's my download speed?” Geoffrey A. Fowler / @geoffreyfowler : Amazon is buying @geteero, my favorite mesh Wi-fi router. Makes a lot of sense: elegant hardware design + a service business. Let's just hope they don't mess it up. That's a lot more consumer data going into Amazon's hands. http://press.aboutamazon.com/ ... Brandon LeBlanc / @brandonleblanc : I use Eero and I am not sure how I feel about this. Actually, it bothers me more than not. I want my router to be independent from all the other smart things to keep me protected. I may be on the market for switching to a new product. http://twitter.com/... Guilherme Rambo / @_inside : I wonder what this means for the privacy of Eero users. http://twitter.com/... John Sheehan / @johnsheehan : This makes a ton of sense. With Alexa, Ring, and Blink they're building quite a smart home platform. They should get Wink too. eero is such a good product. I hope they don't ruin it. http://twitter.com/... Shira Ovide / @shiraovide : So Amazon now has its own brand of: *Voice activated speakers/video phones *Connected TVs *Connected home doorbells & lights (Ring) *Home security cameras (Blink) *WiFi router company (eero) Raj Nijjer / @rajnijjer : Interesting acquisition by amazon w.r.t. voice implications, hopefully a good return for initial @geteero investors @hunterwalk @alexohanian http://twitter.com/... Owen Williams / @ow : 2019: Google and Amazon make the best routers in the industry. Somehow, Apple isn't even playing. Not really what I expected to happen.http://www.theverge.com/ ... Tom Warren / @tomwarren : Amazon is increasingly taking over the home. It has Echo devices, Alexa-enabled hardware, Fire TVs, doorbells, security cameras, and now routers! http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Eero spent four years building credibility as a premium standalone product: it launched in 2015 to kill home Wi-Fi dead spots with a multi-box mesh (mesh boxes aimed at dead zones), then in 2016 added Alexa integration and TrueMesh dynamic rerouting that lifted LAN speeds up to 40% (Alexa integration and TrueMesh update). That pre-existing Alexa hook is what makes this acquisition a natural fit rather than a pivot.
Amazon is buying the layer of the home its Echo, Ring, and Blink devices all depend on: the network itself. The stated goal is easier setup and connection of smart home devices, which addresses the single biggest friction point in the category — and hands Amazon visibility into every packet flowing through the house, a trade-off Geoffrey Fowler flagged immediately.
First-order effects
- Amazon now owns both the devices and the network they run on, so eero routers can be tuned around Echo, Ring, and Blink onboarding instead of treating those setups as third-party traffic.
- Eero's customers inherit a new owner whose business model runs on consumer data — Fowler's note that 'that's a lot more consumer data going into Amazon's hands' captures the immediate trust question hanging over the brand.
Second-order effects
- Amazon moved fast to defuse the privacy concern once the deal closed, cutting eero bundle prices by $100 and pledging to keep eero's network data private ($100 price cut and privacy pledge at close) — pricing power plus reassurance deployed together to keep existing users from defecting.
- Rival router makers now face an incumbent bundling mesh hardware with the dominant smart home assistant, pressuring them to strike their own voice-assistant integrations or compete on privacy positioning alone.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the home router stops being a commodity box and becomes the control point for smart home adoption — whoever owns the network layer decides which devices connect easily and what data they generate, shifting competition from specs to ecosystem custody.
- The privacy pledge sets a template other platform owners will be pushed to match: acquiring infrastructure companies triggers demands for explicit data-handling commitments as a condition of consumer acceptance.
The trend: Smart home platforms are absorbing the residential network layer itself, turning routers from neutral plumbing into an owned distribution and data asset.