Amazon Acquires Mesh WiFi Maker Eero

Opportunity for what ? Selling your data? No thanks. Stick with dumb router folks.

 

What’s the router that you currently use and what will you upgrade to instead of Eero?

 

As with many others, I feel like I dodged a bullet here. We had eero on our short list for upgrades from our ancient 802.11n Time Capsule, but ended up going with an Orbi in large part because it, unlike eero, has zero reliance on the cloud to operate.

Now that eero has been bought out by Amazon, I wonder to what extent that reliance on the cloud can be exploited to their advantage. Cloud dependence may have seemed harmless before, but it's clearly no longer the benign design decision it may have once appeared to be. It's now quite obviously a vector for information collection and a major detriment to the product for anyone who's concerned with their own privacy or interested in having better control over their own data.

 

Ring, Eero, Alexa devices. They’re taking over your home folks!

 

Cupertino, start your photocopiers (and build some new Airports)...

 

That’s a bummer for anyone with an Eero. Now Amazon will collect all of your data. I considered an Eero, but went with the Orbi. Heard it was a great product though.

 

My AirPort extreme died on me suddenly and was debating whether to get the Netgear or this.
So glad that I dodged a bullet...

 

This isn’t a matter of IF but WHEN. Totally will happen. Just look at what happened with Ring employees looking at doorbell video.

 

I’ve been deciding between the netgear orbi and this. Reviews all pointed me toward the Eero. The Eero has been in my cart for a week now. Not real sure what impact this will have for my decision.

 

I, too, would like to see Apple get back in the network equipment game, but barring that, just stay away from network gear whose owner has an agenda other than making "secure network gear". To me, Ubiquity is the best choice out there, at this point, even if they are a tad pricey.

 

If you value your privacy sell any of these you own ASAP!

 

Oh man, I figured these were folks that were somewhat "trustable" (compared to Google, Amazon, Facebook), this is a big bummer (especially with Apple dumping their wireless router line).

>> Hi Steve! eero and Amazon take customer privacy very seriously and we will continue to protect it. eero does not track customers’ internet activity and this policy will not change with the acquisition. <<

Had to laugh at this quote from Amazon / Eero. Almost the exact same thing Facebook said about WhatsApp back when they bought it. Now Facebook is folding WhatsApp into the Facebook data stream as the WhatsApp founders flee the company. Amazon bought Eero to own your house data stream at some point, that's how it becomes valuable.

 

A bit nervous about continuing to use my eero network.

Amazon: “All your base (stations) are belong to us”

 

erro's response to concerns:

"Hi Steve! eero and Amazon take customer privacy very seriously and we will continue to protect it. eero does not track customers’ internet activity and this policy will not change with the acquisition.

— eero support"

 

The opportunity to maintain even a tenuous foothold in the growing IoT/home automation/networking market.

The opportunity to keep its hardware business diversified.

The opportunity to own/operate a company that was a pioneer in mesh networking, even if it meant operating it as a separate entity. Instead, Apple has spent $3B on a fashion headphone company, in an acqui-hire where those principals are no longer even part of the company.

What is Apple's home strategy? Whatever it is, it's not working.

"Works with Alexa/Google" is nearly ubiquitous. "Works with HomeKit" is often more of a question where the answer is "no."

Yes, Apple made HomeKit hard to implement, and with high privacy safeguards. But even after the effort to make it easier, HomeKit still lags, and has been relegated to second-class citizen in IoT.

Past Apple peripherals, including AirPorts and printers, weren't necessary the biggest sellers. But they were first-party reference quality products that showed users and third-parties the template for what could be done, and how it could be done.

Apple's reliance on third-parties to promote HomeKit has failed, but Cupertino doesn't seem to notice. Now it's left to play catch up to Amazon and Google.

Those two can be rightly criticized for their privacy stances, but privacy and home automation aren't mutually exclusive. Where are the options for such products that do respect privacy, in line with Apple's stated principles? There is demand for that, but choices are limited.

The Home market is one that Apple has entirely failed to recognize, seize, and capitalize on. HomePod was already too little, too late, and ain't gonna do it.

 

Sure, Eero...

Didn't we have another front page news about Ring?

 

Apple really meshed up so to speak

 

As I said, I have an AirPort. It’s an Extreme 802.11ac. Doesn’t have the speed beyond my office to support the gigabit network in my neighborhood. I want better coverage too (my new house is about 3000sqft, or about 3400sqft if you include my unfinished workshop area where I also need WiFi, and the house I bought my router for was only about 1600sqft). I’ll have to do more research now. I liked that eero had a built-in filtering subscription service that is important to me as my kids get older. I think Orbi and Velop were the ones that I had been considering.

 

I love my Orbi set up. Mesh has surpassed my Apple set up, even extended with with 2 extensions via Apple hardware. Way better coverage.

 

Prediction: 10% of Eero's current customers will leave due to privacy concerns, and then Amazon will add 1000% new users through sheer marketing dominance.

Me: Happy to continue using my Airport Extreme.

 

Does anyone want to offload their Eero network? I’m in the market...

Seriously

 

Drat, that was looking like a good product. So much for this one. No way in heck I'm going to put an Amazon, Facebook, or Google owned product in my home.

--- Post Merged, Feb 11, 2019 at 9:34 PM ---

LOL LOL LOL!!!

If they had said that Eero takes customer data seriously, and they don't anticipate the Amazon acquisition changing that... then I'd believe them (Eero) and question how long it might be until that changes.

But, including that Amazon takes privacy seriously... wait, I just can't stop laughing... I think that clears things up pretty well. It's a bunch of BS, and they'll absolutely be including your data into Amazon's pot.

I suppose it could be worse, though, at least it isn't Facebook. Not that it makes me feel much better.

 

Bleh. Wifi access points have nothing to do with Amazon. This acquisition won't mean anything good.

 

You'll probably be in luck. I've seen lots of people on various forums talking about offloading them. Though, they are also talking about the possibilities of creating open-source firmware and such... so it might be a while until the dust settles. But, I think a lot of people are quite serious about either getting rid of them or altering them.

 

Sadly, very few routers are dumb. Anything you get from the cable company by default has quite a lot going on in it. Not just spying stuff but crapware that's often easily hackable. Really I just want something that routes packets, maybe has a wifi AP, and has me configure it via USB or something.

At least the Amazon, Google, etc ones will be secure from hackers since they have reputation to lose, but they'll send data to the company of course. Google just revealed that their security system always had a secret mic in the base station, so I'm absolutely not putting any of their stuff in my house.