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A brand new letter penned by Senate and Home Democrats accuses Amazon of “anticompetitive” practices in its bid to buy Roomba-maker, iRobot, for $1.7 billion. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is main the cost to persuade the Federal Commerce Fee to reject the deal, based on a report from Axios.
“Moderately than compete in a good market by itself deserves, Amazon is following a well-recognized anticompetitive playbook: leveraging its huge market share and entry to capital to purchase or suppress common merchandise,” notes the letter cosigned by fellow congressional Democrats, Mondaire Jones, Mark Pocan Jesus G. “Chuy” Garcia, Pramila Jayapal and Katie Porter.
The report arrives throughout a second of elevated regulatory scrutiny for the web retail large. Each the deliberate iRobot and One Medical offers have raised antitrust considerations amongst lawmakers. The FTC has notable already been investigating each. Amazon has seemingly been extra aggressively pursuing acquisitions below new CEO Andy Jassy, at a time when the regulatory physique has pushed to dam related offers by huge tech. Most notably, FTC chairwoman Lina Khan lately sued to dam Meta/Fb’s acquisition of VR agency, Inside Limitless, citing anticompetitive considerations.
The deal is on the middle of Amazon’s plans to aggressively push into the house robotics class, in a lot the identical manner its 2012 acquisition of Kiva Programs helped it change into a dominant power in industrial robotics. Amazon’s providing within the class is at present restricted to the house robotic Astro, however folding iRobot into the division would discover the agency dominating the house in a single day. iRobot’s Roomba is the uncommon dwelling robotic that has managed to interrupt into mainstream use.
Given Amazon’s historical past and iRobot’s dwelling mapping, the deal has additionally raised concern amongst privateness advocates.
TechCrunch has reached out to each Amazon and Senator Warren’s workplace for remark.
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