How do you get to be the Kleenex of robot vacuums and manage to fumble that advantage so bad?
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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By not enforcing your patents. Just ask TiVo.
Also they spun off the military robots arm of the company into its own business a long while back, so they didn’t really care about this corp anymore.
Nest or Ring would be smart to buy up the carcass of iRobot for their IP, talent ,and customer base. But they probably won’t.
Is nest still a thing? Thought it rebranded to Google cavity search or something.
Doesn't I robot have the floorplan of all their customer’s homes? That still seems on brand
AFAIK, yes. In the cloud, isn’t it? True, it would be very in brand.
"By not enforcing your patents"
You're absolutely right. From the article:
Years of stagnation and underinvestment have left its product lineup dated, while mass layoffs have gutted its development teams.
Patents would have held up this carcass for years and years, preventing anyone from actually innovating and improving on the original design, and keeping the prices bloated. Fuck patents.
It's like complaining that you got overtaken when you stopped running after the 100m line, when you're running a marathon.
And just like that, a close-to-$1k purchase will become a paperweight, taunting the purchaser from beyond the grave.
Unless your Roomba is old enough to be without cloud connection! Those that bumped into things and turned around like children's toys.
I know that feel. Welcome to the gang!
Sent from my Neato BotVac D7
It’s time to hack 😎
Valetudo is such a godsend.
Wow, that sucks. Well, maybe not for much longer.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy described the situation as “a sad story” and “an example of regulation gone wrong” during an interview with CNBC.
Oh no, the big mean regulators didn't let me acquire even more companies. 😢
Honestly their products are trash. I spent a fortune on a Roomba and Braava jet and while their actual cleaning is marvelous the tracking drives me batshit insane — if it weren’t for me working from home they’d never get anything done.
I’ve regretted not buying from Roborock so much. iRobot’s customer service is outsourced with lots of “fuck you” energy too. So yeah, they’re basically like any other American brand that either sells out and/or enshittifies everything.
My cheap Chinese bot was $200, worked without an app, and sold spare parts cheap. It still wanted me to use the app but hell no.
Rem is the most productive member of my household.