The Federal Trade Commission is under increasing pressure to prohibit Amazon’s planned $1.65 billion acquisition of iRobot, the company behind Roomba self-driving vacuums.
A group of Democratic congressmen said in a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan on Thursday that the planned merger would unjustly boost Amazon’s dominance in the smart home industry by purchasing one of the company’s major rivals. They also attacked Amazon’s data privacy and security procedures in the aftermath of previous purchases of firms like Ring, which had data-sharing collaborations with over 600 law enforcement agencies around the nation.
“iRobot is a strong market incumbent, and Amazon, with its massive resources, history of developing smart vacuums… and powerful platform, is an incredibly substantial ‘possible entrant’ into the market,” the legislators stated on Thursday.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spearheaded the letter, which was co-signed by four additional House members, including Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who represents thousands of Amazon employees in Seattle.
Antitrust regulators in the United States and the European Union have begun a number of probes against Amazon and its goods over the past two years. Politico recently reported that the FTC was looking into the company’s ambitions to enter the healthcare business by buying One Medical for over $4 billion. Amazon completed its $8.45 billion acquisition of MGM earlier this year, but it’s unclear if the regulator intends to investigate the agreement further as of publishing.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that the FTC’s antitrust investigators were already scrutinizing the planned purchase. In recent securities filings, iRobot acknowledged that the FTC officially sought any documentation explaining the planned purpose and extent of the transaction.
“Given Amazon’s track record of violating customers’ privacy and their continued history of anticompetitive acquisitions to expand their monopolistic power,” the legislators wrote, “the FTC should utilize its powers to block the Amazon-iRobot deal.”
Chair Khan, whose critiques of Amazon’s market strength propelled her to notoriety, would lead these probes. Khan released a legal brief in 2017 saying that the federal government may need to establish new antitrust regulations to effectively confront online digital platforms like Amazon’s market dominance.
