I was gutted to hear that Roomba’s parent company, iRobot, is going into bankruptcy.
Mom and I were both early Roomba adopters. I still have the early virtual “walls” from my first one. I currently have \ a heavy-duty basement Roomba, a pet model ground floor Roomba, and a mopping “Scooba”.
I know there are other vacuuming and mopping robots. It seems a shame to buy one now given that Gary delights in running the combo sweeper/dustbuster every other day.
I’ll keep the basement ones exercised and use Gary as my … Goomba.
4 responses to “Roomba bankruptcy”
The Goomba should keep working – any word on whether the Roombas will as well? (also I am not a fan of companies that have large amounts of personal data being sold; I may trust [random small company with good leadership] to only use my data for things that are not actively hostile to my interests, but I definitely don’t trust the big league players that way)(that said, “what is your floor plan and how often does the roomba fill” is not all *that* personal, I guess? Fitness watches I get more jumpy about.)
KC – I can see something to worry about with the fitness watches that make a map of where you run, I can see how that would be useful to a criminal… but a business? For a business though I’d worry if my watch told my employer that I had a heart problem.
Yeah, a while ago a fitness watch put out a motivational map of Where People Run and thereby accidentally exposed some US military bases, oops.
But also yes, watches can tell all sorts of things health insurance companies would like to put you in a high-risk group for.
Roomba’s data, at least as long as they don’t have cameras on there [but they may?] is a whole lot less “useful” than a smartwatch’s data, but I’d bet some sales companies would still want it for targeted advertising – when does the furniture move and roomba need remapping? is there a season/date/something correlation that we can target ads directly before, to make someone feel like their Spring Refresh of the house really *needs* these throw pillows? Was the roomba choking on pet hair and now it isn’t? Well, there are these pet memorial products you might want now… When are you away and for how long? (per things like “roomba gets stuck, is not rescued for 6 days” or other cues) Landlords might also want to know some things, as would home insurance companies…
I figure if Target could, years ago, reliably guess when someone’s pregnant based on their non-pregnancy-test purchases, nearly any data stream can be used for things we don’t immediately think of. But hopefully the companies aren’t smart enough?
KC – oops indeed. And Target? That’s just rude. Very invasive. Don’t want Target knowing before your Mom!