Amazon has officially closed its deal to purchase wireless mesh router maker Eero for an undisclosed sum, the two companies announced today. In the same motion, both companies promise to keep user network data private, and that Eero will be run autonomously within Amazon.
Speaking with The Verge in advance of the deal announcement, Amazon SVP of devices and services Dave Limp said, “we’re not changing a word” of Eero’s privacy policy.
If you remember, Amazon announced its purchase of Eero in early February. Since that announcement, worries of privacy have cropped up throughout social media.
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Eero CEO Nick Weaver doubled down on this pro-privacy stance with both The Verge and in a blog post published to coincide with the purchase announcement.
“If anything, we’re just going to strengthen our commitment to both privacy and security,” Weaver told The Verge. “We’ve got some pretty clear privacy principles that we’ve used for developing all of our products, that are the really the underpinnings of everything. Those aren’t going to change.”
If you have to make all these promises up front…
The fact that the first issue Eero and Amazon have to get in front of with this acquisition is privacy isn’t the best look for either party to this deal.
Amazon’s purchase comes at a time when companies like itself and Google are under more scrutiny than ever regarding how far they’re allowed into our private lives via their various devices and services.
Inversely, this deal couldn’t be better timed for Amazon’s smart home ambitions, with the need for powerful and expandable Wi-Fi technology to support a web of connected devices in the home that will only grow in number.
Weaver, meanwhile, claims to respect the severity of this decision: “People are inviting us into their homes,” Weaver said to The Verge. “I take that really seriously.”
This sentiment is echoed in his blog post, and much more detailed in exactly how Eero will continue to commit itself to user privacy. Will it be enough to convince existing Eero users to stick around much less assuage new customers? We’ll see whether Amazon’s honking $100 discount on Eero systems in the US will help with that.
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