
Amazon is buying Eero - mikece
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/amazon-is-buying-home-mesh-router-startup-eero/
======
hn_throwaway_99
Hah, followed this twitter post,
[https://twitter.com/LaurenGoode/status/1095084761796685824](https://twitter.com/LaurenGoode/status/1095084761796685824),
from another commenter that leads to the Eero CEO on an episode of Too
Embarrassed to Ask from 2017. This question from the interviewer is now pretty
ironic:

> KS: I say one of the biggest things is that you don’t want Google messing
> around in your home. Honestly, half of my decisions are made like that, and
> now I don’t want as much Amazon in there because I buy everything now
> because I’m at Whole Foods. It’s fascinating. Part of it is that idea as an
> independent. You don’t want those two or three companies to really dominate
> every single data interaction you have, which is a plus for you guys,
> presumably.

> Our business model is to sell you a premium product and that’s our business.

From [https://www.recode.net/2017/8/11/16135384/transcript-eero-
ce...](https://www.recode.net/2017/8/11/16135384/transcript-eero-ceo-nick-
weaver-answers-wi-fi-mesh-router-questions-podcast)

~~~
romwell
>This question from the interviewer is now pretty ironic

The word you need here is _prescient_. Nothing ironic about how things ended
up playing out.

~~~
wwweston
Positioning Eero's offerings via contrast to Amazon as a privacy threat... and
then ending up Amazon-allied/assimilated does carry some irony.

~~~
dmix
The CEO only said their product is positioned as a premium product. The
interviewer was the one mentioning Amazon and Google being in your home.

The CEO’s reply was pretty neutral in that regard.

------
btmiller
Some acquisitions make sense, some don't, but the propensity for founders and
investors to push for an exit depresses the free market consumer in me. I want
lots and lots of choices for anything I consider buying, yet nearly every
acquisition making headlines lately seems like it falls into 1 of 2
categories: 1) a marketshare power grab, or 2) a mechanism to gather more
customer data to an already massive empire.

Somewhat related: are there any viable open source mesh network solutions for
home use?

~~~
nicoburns
This is precisely why large concentrations of wealth are harmful to the (free-
market) economy. They distort the market entirely. A wealth cap / _much_
stronger taxation on individuals and businesses funding a basic income would
be a good way to fix this without breaking the market mechanism.

A concentration of wealth is nothing other than a concentration of (economic)
power, and it's bad for exactly the same reasons that other concentrations of
power are.

It boggles my mind that people who argue against large governments because
their incentives aren't correctly aligned don't see that precisely the same
argument applies to private individual/businesses with large amounts of
wealth.

~~~
pitaj
> This is precisely why large concentrations of wealth are harmful to the
> (free-market) economy.

Large concentrations of wealth are necessary for scaling production, allowing
lower costs and increasing standard of living. Moreover, large concentrations
of wealth are usually not very concentrated in the first place: the wealth of
the wealthy is spread across the economy and the wealth of associations is
spread across the world.

> It boggles my mind that people who argue against large governments because
> their incentives aren't correctly aligned don't see that precisely the same
> argument applies to private individual/businesses with large amounts of
> wealth.

The same arguments RE power/monopoly/unaccountability that apply to
corporations in the market apply to the government much more in every case.
Additionally, the government has the authority to coerce everyone into doing
what they want to be done. It also has the ability to steal your money and
spend it on things that you might somewhat benefit from at the best or are
absolutely morally reprehensible at the worst.

And no, the existence of voting does not make any of that less of a problem.

~~~
chalst
Economies of scale taper off: truly large concentrations of wealth are not
needed for this, and oligopolies can free large companies from the kind of
competition that drives the search for efficiency.

I am not sure about how large concentrations of wealth are supposed to
increase the standard of living across the population.

------
whoisjuan
It's clear that Amazon doesn't mess around. They're literally going into bull-
dozer mode to capture all the connected home market.

It frankly makes Google look extremely slow, especially with how hard it has
been for them to make sense of that Nest acquisition, in early 2014.

~~~
drcross
Google wifi is a solid product, but needs a completely separate backhaul
network for client mesh handover. Once set up properly it's unbelievably good
in a larger house.

~~~
annon
I have Google Wifi at home and a unifi mesh at my office. Unless you are
covering a massive area or have more than 25 clients, I’d have a real hard
time recommending unifi. It requires much more configuration and maintenance.
Google WiFi you really just forget about it - handles patches automatically,
finds you the best channel automatically, tests your uplink daily and logs
results.

Unifi’s software is much better than any other enterprise solution, but it
still has a lot of rough edges and bugs if you’re doing anything non-standard.

~~~
Johnny555
Have you looked at their home wifi Amplfi line?
[https://www.amplifi.com/](https://www.amplifi.com/)

It's supposed to be plug-and-play.

I'd probably buy one, but I'm pretty happy with my 2 year old Unifi AC router,
after initial setup, I haven't done anything to it - I have it set to update
firmware automatically.

------
sotojuan
Hm, was going to purchase one because some of my favorite podcasts, Mac Power
Users and ATP, rave about it. I'm not sure how I feel about Eero now.

I don't have any Amazon smart thing and not sure I want one.

~~~
fossuser
I got a bunch for my parents who have a pretty large house in western new york
- they are just okay.

I'd recommend a Ubiquity Access Point, Ubiquity Security Gateway, and a
Ubiquity Cloud Key instead. You could add one of their managed switches too if
you need more network ports.

They work great, aren't that tough to set up and have better performance.

~~~
macNchz
Ubiquiti makes really good stuff–I recently had a great experience setting it
up for a 50-person office–but it's not necessarily a replacement for actual
mesh wifi since you still need ethernet (and PoE) to hook them up.

My parents house is large, old, allergic to wifi and complicated to wire for
ethernet...I set up a mesh network for them last year and it has been a
revelation after years of terrible wifi.

~~~
kuzimoto
I'm pretty sure all the unifi APs support a wireless uplink. They also have
"mesh APs". But they do still need the PoE injector if you don't have a PoE
switch.

~~~
macNchz
Ah indeed it looks like they enabled multi-hop wireless uplink via a firmware
update last summer about a month after I set up my parents house, so I was
behind the times on that.

------
mises
I was considering buying one. Not any more.

I don't have an alexa or google home or any other "smart" home device, and
don't plan to get one. The hard part will be when they integrate such software
into every appliance. Anyone have any idea what those of us concerned about
privacy will do then?

Also, I still don't get what the point of having a "digital assistant" in all
my appliances is. Can anyone explain?

~~~
ravenstine
They're only useful if you've got Phillips Hue lights installed. Other than
that, smart speakers like Alexa and Google Home _suck_.

This is coming from a former enthusiast who quit his job to build a cross-
platform framework and SaaS for those things, and owned them in his home for
years. I _really wanted_ to like them.

Trust is a big issue with these companies, but putting any conspiracy theories
aside, they're just not very smart or useful. Under the hood, it's a glorified
command-line that's voice activated, which is why spoken commands are often
very inflexible; if you have to learn _exactly_ what to say to it, then it's
not much of an assistant or better than simply pressing buttons. They are also
a form of vendor lock-in, as there's really no standard for writing VUIs(voice
user interfaces) like there is for writing web applications. As a developer,
you're stuck working with their crippled APIs, and everything has to go
through their servers.

Recent news around Google has convinced me to leave those devices unplugged
for good. It was fun trying to "program" them, but after years both
professionally and privately trying to come up with ways to make them useful,
I always came up empty handed. If it weren't for the fact that they can
control lights really well, I'd say they belong in a garbage can. Either way,
they are a gateway to more of the surveillance economy.

EDIT: Being able to play Amazon Music or Spotify on them would be useful if
those VUIs, years later, still weren't a complete joke. It's nifty being able
to ask smart speakers to play music until you've experienced enough times of
it not recognizing particular bands or not finding songs/albums that are
clearly in the mobile app. _They suck._

~~~
mises
Yeah, this is the general sense I got. Only useful if you already have a
"smart home", which doesn't actually do very much. And music.

But for music, some of us don't want to pay $9.99/mo for a bs streaming
service, but already have all our music ripped from cd on a nas.

------
torstenvl
I'm surprised that so many people here own an eero or were going to buy one.
Last I checked, they required a sign-in and were completely unusable if the
Internet connection went down. The router simply will not work if it can't
phone home. Is that no longer the case?

If Amazon fixes that, I'd almost be more likely to buy one (if I ever get
tired of my AmpliFi HD).

EDIT: Looks like eeroOS 3.9 was supposed to have fixed network persistence a
few months ago, but no word on whether you still need to sign up for an
account to use it. Can anyone confirm?
[https://community.eero.com/t/m26cfr/offline-wlan-
access](https://community.eero.com/t/m26cfr/offline-wlan-access)

~~~
epc
I don't use eero+ (their managed firewall service) and run my eeros in bridge
mode behind an ISP router/firewall…so with those caveats: my wifi has stayed
up even when the uplink to the ISP is down. I have not tried managing the wifi
when this has happened so it's possible that the app doesn't work.

------
post_break
I wonder how some of the tech podcasters will react to this. Feels like on the
ATP podcast they are constantly talking about how great Eero is. Wonder if
that will change.

~~~
ProAm
That's just advertising. They will accept sponsorship from many many
companies.

~~~
MBCook
They seem to genuinely like the product, even if they are also sponsored by
eero.

But will they stop accepting eero as a sponsor? I could easily see that
happening.

~~~
ProAm
It's more will Eero still pay them for sponsorship. I doubt it because its not
really needed anymore but maybe

------
r00fus
This is one reason I refused to consider Eero in my "Apple is ditching AirPort
line, look for secure replacement" flight.

Glad I settled on Ubiquiti. If anything, given their leadership background,
they'd be acquired by Apple.

~~~
dba7dba
I understand that Ubiquiti sells more than just wifi routers.

BUT still, it makes me chuckle that Apple would kill off AirPort, product that
was well liked by customers, only to buy (I mean IF the did) a WHOLE new
company that includes a wifi router in the product lineup.

------
theNJR
Part of why I loved my Eero was that wasn't Google or Amazon controlled.
Sigh...

------
mikeklaas
Sigh, now amazon owns my home wifi system. That's super reassuring...

------
ballenf
How long until the adblocking, privacy features (Eero Plus) go away now? I'm
guessing it will just slowly start getting glitchier until they pull it due to
"low consumer demand".

As an Eero customer and owner of zero commercial eavesdropping hubs, I'm not
happy about this.

~~~
kolanos
Just swap it out with Google Wifi. Oh wait...

~~~
Deinos
Ubiquiti and Netgear are still out there with decent consumer mesh kits... for
now...

~~~
Someone1234
Ubiquiti's consumer stuff is kind of bad (AmpliFi). I like their small
business grade gear however (Unifi, and EdgeMax). Definitely wouldn't
recommend it to most consumers however, it is Prosumer/Enthusiast level or
above.

~~~
r00fus
Why is AmpliFi bad? I'd honestly like to hear.

~~~
mead5432
I had one of the early models of the AmpliFi. It was generally pretty solid.
We have a really old house with a lot of brick and plaster and it did well at
filling the house with wifi when other routers came up short. We got gigabit
internet and it just sort of collapsed. I think newer versions are better
equipped for that speed but ours couldn't seem to get past 100 mbps.

I thought their support was really good though. The main issue I have with it
is that, for some reason, they were unable to identify my model number as
being an older version that didn't support gigabit. They were super helpful
but could have saved us both some time if they just paid closer attention to
the model number.

I opted for the Netgear Orbi; good reviews and satellites capable of up to
~800 mbps in ideal situations.

------
wpdev_63
It makes me a bit uneasy using anything amazon related as they have large
contracts with the US military[0]. Granted the personal could be completely
insular but why take the chance?

[0]:[https://aws.amazon.com/government-
education/defense/](https://aws.amazon.com/government-education/defense/)

------
b1r6
Just checked out their offering, and they sell....glorified WiFi routers and
range extenders?

And I've just read there's a mandatory account + sign-in for these things?

What am I missing?! Just go buy a couple consumer routers and a spool of cat5e
and you're done. If you're lazy, get a powerline device to bring connectivity
to the remote router.

This is goofy!

~~~
Marsymars
I wouldn't recommend the average consumer get a consumer router without
automatic security updates.

~~~
philpem
I wouldn't recommend the average consumer get a consumer router, full stop.

Even if it has automatic security updates, you can bet that as soon as the
thing's discontinued, the updates will be too...

~~~
Marsymars
What are you recommending to the average consumer then? Assuming the average
consumer is unable to use a web-based config UI, or to pay anyone to do
configuration for them.

~~~
philpem
I'd probably offer to buy them a Mikrotik Routerboard and set it up for them.

------
newnewpdro
No Eero employees chiming in?

I don't think they were in the money, and suspect there are some seriously
disappointed shareholders right now.

~~~
BayAreaSmayArea
$90M in funding according to crunchbase,
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/eero/funding_rounds/...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/eero/funding_rounds/funding_rounds_list),
and it's been almost 3 years since the last one.

------
rsweeney21
I've been using Eero for our home wifi for several years now. It works
reasonably well and the family settings are great for controlling screen time
for my kids.

I also use it to help control my own screen time. With eero I can set up a
schedule to force myself to unplug from work and the internet on a regular
basis.

I'm hoping Amazon makes Eero Plus free for prime users.

------
bedhead
Amplifi from Ubiquiti has by far the best networking gear if you just need a
simple plug-and-play mesh network for your house.

------
lifeisstillgood
Slightly different subject but does anyone know the state of play in (for want
of better term) "public mesh" provision - having routers talk directly to
neighboring routers and forming advocates local networks (possibly with mobile
included?)

It's an area I often think could truly bring about decentralisation but it
seems quiet

~~~
ransford
Not an answer to your question, but: this is how Meraki started in the
previous decade, as RoofNet at MIT [1], then as an independent company
building wonderful idiot-proof mesh networking gear. I keep hoping another
team of students somewhere will come up with RoofNet's spiritual successor,
but interest in stitching together community meshes seems to be waning as
everyone gets excited about 5G.

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20060831053126/http://pdos.csail...](https://web.archive.org/web/20060831053126/http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/roofnet/doku.php)

------
monochromatic
Am I wrong to assume Amazon will be slurping as much private data (browsing
habits etc.) as possible?

------
Pxtl
Having gone through a couple of stinker routers that cost me over $100 a
piece, and having friends with similar stories, I'm thinking consumers are
ready to spend properly on good name-brand wifi. Netgear can die in a fire.

~~~
Marsymars
Maybe your friends are better off than mine, but I've had a hell of a time
recommending Eero for performance, security and stability when a single base
station is $280, and my friends can get a model off Amazon that "just works"
for $30.

~~~
pfranz
Those $30 routers die after a year or two and seem to constantly have trouble
in the interim--but I know exactly what you mean. I've gone out and purchased
things for close friends and family just because I have to hear about it or
support it.

------
vermontdevil
Does traffic that currently goes through Eero products also go through their
cloud servers if they have any? I don’t have these products so am wondering if
this is something they do. For sure it’ll be an area of concern.

~~~
srmn
From what I understand from using the product personally, unless you sign up
for Eero Plus, it does not.

You can also use them in bridge mode with a separate router in which they
simply act as a mesh of wifi access points and don't do any routing or DHCP,
but obviously they'd still have access to the frames of anything going over
wireless and the ability to read their contents if they'd like, since they'd
be the ones doing the encryption.

------
aeturnum
Goddamnit, I liked my Eeros. I guess I need to decide if I want to forever
monitor the changes Amazon makes to their functionality or switch router
makers.

------
gnicholas
Time for Apple to put WiFi on their HomePods.

~~~
frou_dh
Like the idea, but the only snag is that placement of the HomePod in the house
would become compromised because it'd have to be a balance between where makes
most sense for music/voice vs. where makes most sense for WiFi coverage.

Selling multiple at $350 each just for WiFi range extension is probably beyond
even Apple's marketing.

------
nodesocket
Nice acquisition. Should help them integrate Alexa into a single box that
provides router, WiFi, and switch.

~~~
obenn
Nice from a business perspective for sure. I shudder as a privacy conscious
consumer.

~~~
corobo
Indeed. Just seen in my Twitter feed via @LaurenGoode [1]

> Every Eero that’s connected ends up spitting out data to help us understand
> how our iPhone’s performing, how our Sonos speaker’s performing, how is
> Alexa performing, and we use that aggregated data to keep improving our
> software.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/LaurenGoode/status/1095084761796685824](https://twitter.com/LaurenGoode/status/1095084761796685824)

~~~
creeble
Wow -- I wonder what data they're going to collect once they're Amazon.

Need a canary for
[https://eero.com/legal/privacy](https://eero.com/legal/privacy) . Look for
the string "URI" or "URL" to see when they start collecting browsing data.

~~~
wmf
Routers can't see URLs now that everything is HTTPS but they could still
collect valuable site-level metadata.

~~~
JohnFen
Except in networks like mine -- I MITM all HTTPS traffic in my network so that
I can detect and handle threats that use HTTPS to hide themselves from my
defenses.

~~~
kpcyrd
How often do you run into certificate pinning issues?

~~~
JohnFen
I haven't, to the best of my knowledge.

------
NoblePublius
If you buy an Alexa router you might as well run a patch cable directly to the
NSA.

~~~
mindslight
But the entire point of products like this is to not have to run patch cables!

At least direct NSA backhauls are only analyzed and acted upon by the slow
moving government. Commercial surveillance is more agile in both regards, and
then passed off to the government anyway.

The true pity of these products is the decommodification of Wifi. Meaning
rather than hardware manufacturers competing to bring us ever-faster radios,
the market will slouch into just competing over who supports the recent batch
of throwaway firmware features.

------
JohnJamesRambo
The six page memo wrote itself on this one. Ensures there is an Alexa in every
room, since you are supposed to have an Eero in every room for it to work
right.

~~~
ec109685
You don’t need eero in every room. That is a total overkill.

Agree Alexa with WiFi mesh routing is a no brainer though.

~~~
kkarakk
"Alexa data mine my whole life"

------
dawhizkid
Funny how Apple got out of the router game...

------
EGreg
Can someone explain what is “mesh” about this

------
bubblethink
I don't get the number of people complaining about "Oh, what is going to
happen to my data ?". What did you think was going to happen in the first
place ? If you possess time/skill, hack on openwrt. If you don't have
time/skill, but have money, buy enterprise gear. If you have neither time, nor
skill, nor money, and want shiny toys, what do you think will happen ? How
many times do these patterns have to repeat before people stop buying lowest
common consumer garbage ?

~~~
Marsymars
Enterprise gear for home use if you don't have time/skill doesn't really work
unless you also have money to pay an enterprise professional to configure your
home network.

------
vuln
So if Amazon doesn't have any stores (sans whole foods) and recently received
a patent to ban 'in-store' price checking[1]. Now every time you connect to
and Eero, you're on amazon's network, your home is their showroom... Good luck

[1]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/06/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/06/16/amazon-
has-a-patent-to-keep-you-from-comparison-shopping-while-youre-in-its-
stores/?utm_term=.9628433866e2)

~~~
ravenstine
How this is patentable is beyond me.

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US9665881B1/en?oq=9665881](https://patents.google.com/patent/US9665881B1/en?oq=9665881)

I should revisit the unoriginal crap I've got on my GitHub and try to patent
it.

