from the knock-knock-who's-there?-not-Amazon dept.
Amazon has acquired Ring for over $1 billion:
Amazon said Tuesday that it had acquired Ring, a maker of internet-connected doorbells and cameras, pushing more deeply into the home security market. The deal is worth around $1.1 billion, according to a person briefed on the deal who would speak only anonymously because the terms were private.
Ring is best known for a doorbell with a security camera inside. The device allows homeowners to monitor visitors at their front door through an app on their phone, even if they're not at home. Amazon has made home automation a major focus because of the success of its Echo family of products, which allow users to control thermostats, surveillance cameras and other connected devices using voice commands.
[...] James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, said he believed that Amazon had bought Ring so it could add more intelligent capabilities to its doorbells and cameras, like the ability to use software to recognize faces at the front door. "I think it's about going to the next level and having Alexa say, 'James, your fifth grader just walked in, and I locked the door behind them,'" he said. "It's where these technologies have to go."
Also at The Verge.
Related: Amazon Wants to Deliver Purchases into Your Home
Amazon Key Flaw Could Let Rogue Deliverymen Disable Your Camera
Related Stories
Hot on the heels of Walmart's plans to deliver groceries directly into the fridges of homes with smart locks, Amazon has announced a similar arrangement for package deliveries, called Amazon Key:
Amazon on Wednesday announced Amazon Key, a new program for Prime members that lets delivery people drop off packages inside of customer homes.
To make Amazon Key possible, Amazon has introduced its own $120 internet-connected security camera called Amazon Cloud Cam. Customers who want to participate in the program need to purchase an accompanying "smart" lock to allow delivery people to enter their home. Combined camera-lock packages start at $250.
With the program Amazon is adding what it thinks is a more convenient option than traditional outside drop-off, while also coming up with one solution to package theft which is rampant in some markets.
The obvious questions are whether people will trust a delivery person to enter their home unattended. Amazon is trying to assuage these fears by alerting customers when a delivery is about to happen to allow them to watch it live via their phone.
This really isn't a big deal. They were delivering to the doorstep previously, and now they want to move the delivery by a couple of feet. There's almost no difference.
Also at The Verge.
Previously: Amazon Wants to Deliver Purchases to Your Car Trunk
WHEN AMAZON LAUNCHED[sic] its Amazon Key service last month, it also offered a remedy for anyone—realistically, most people—who might be creeped out that the service gives random strangers unfettered access to your home. That security antidote? An internet-enabled camera called Cloud Cam, designed to sit opposite your door and reassuringly record every Amazon Key delivery.
But now security researchers have demonstrated that with a simple program run from any computer in Wi-Fi range, that camera can be not only disabled but frozen. A viewer watching its live or recorded stream sees only a closed door, even as their actual door is opened and someone slips inside. That attack would potentially enable rogue delivery people to stealthily steal from Amazon customers, or otherwise invade their inner sanctum.
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-key-flaw-let-deliverymen-disable-your-camera/
Previously: Walmart Wants to Deliver Groceries Directly Into Your Fridge
Amazon Wants to Deliver Purchases into Your Home
Amazon will stop selling Nest products once its current stock of them runs out:
The impending disappearance of Nest from Amazon marks just the latest development in the acrimonious, anti-consumer feud between Amazon and Google. Nest was absorbed back into Google last month after spending three years as a standalone Alphabet subsidiary. (Google tipped off Nest that Amazon had decided against selling its latest hardware while the companies were still separate.) Amazon has steadfastly refused to sell some Google-branded products like the Google Home voice assistant speaker and the company's Pixel smartphones. In December, the online retailer said it would restart sales of the Chromecast streaming device, but it's been three months and you still can't buy it. Last summer, Amazon launched a Prime Video app for Android, but has yet to add support for streaming its content with a Chromecast.
For its part in this ugly falling out, Google has removed YouTube from Amazon's Fire TV streaming products and the Echo Show / Spot, claiming that Amazon has violated its terms of service with those implementations of the YouTube app. There were once signs that the companies were mending the scorched bridge between them, but that doesn't seem to be the case any longer.
Related:
Amazon Declares War on YouTube by Launching Amazon Video Direct
Google Pulls YouTube off of the Amazon Echo Show
Google's "Manhattan" to Compete With Amazon's Echo Show
Amazon Wants to Deliver Purchases into Your Home
Google Pulls YouTube Off of More Amazon Devices
Google Absorbs Nest, Nest Co-Founder Quits
Amazon Acquires Ring, Maker of Internet-Connected Doorbells and Cameras, for Over $1 Billion
Reports raise video privacy concerns for Amazon-owned Ring
Amazon-owned smart doorbell maker Ring is facing claims that might give some smart home enthusiasts pause. Recent reports from The Intercept and The Information have accused the company of mishandling videos collected by its line of smart home devices, failing to inform users that their videos would be reviewed by humans and failing to protect the sensitive video footage itself with encryption.
In 2016, Ring moved some of its R&D operations to Ukraine as a cost-saving move. According to The Intercept's sources, that team had "unfettered access to a folder on Amazon's S3 cloud storage service that contained every video created by every Ring camera around the world." That group was also privy to a database that would allow anyone with access the ability to conduct a simple search to find videos linked to any Ring owner. At this time, the video files were unencrypted due to the "sense that encryption would make the company less valuable" expressed by leadership at the company.
At the same time the Ukraine team was allowed this access, Ring "executives and engineers" in the U.S. were allowed "unfiltered, round-the-clock live feeds from some customer cameras" even if that access was completely unnecessary for their work.
Also at The Mercury News.
Previously: Amazon Acquires Ring, Maker of Internet-Connected Doorbells and Cameras, for Over $1 Billion
Amazon Plans to Remove Google's Nest Products After Acquisition of Ring
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:40AM (7 children)
We just hired one of their guys. We were wondering today how they could be worth so much given the market is full of competitors.
Gonna be an interesting discussion tomorrow.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday February 28 2018, @02:13PM (6 children)
Well, google paid over three billion for a thermostat, so amazon paying a billion for a doorbell sounds technologically about right. Maybe I should make a light switch and sell that to Facebook; I figure about two billion.
Usually a pretty good pre-recession signal is too much capital chasing too little yield. No idea if this is THE peak but this kind of dumb transaction is the class of financial market signal to look for.
Remember during the dotcom crash when a dialup ISP bought an entertainment conglomerate? Weird stuff happens toward the end of excessively long economic expansion.
Seriously, though, you know its economic bad times coming when the best place to stick a billion bucks in a worldwide free market was... a doorbell?
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:14PM (5 children)
Here we go kids, want to make a billion dollars? Internet connected sprinklers.
- Monitors weather forecast and doesn't water if it's going to rain.
- Waters more if the day will be hot
- Tracks all sorts of things (rain amount, atrificial water amount, water temperature, ambient temperature, light intensity, GPS location, etc...)
- Several LEDs that indicate things
It's brilliant! Someone smart here, steal my idea and remember me
ifwhen you are rich.(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @05:36PM
They have those already. My father's house has had the old style one (where it used a dial-up modem) for over a decade before replacing it with a wifi one (type b, if you are curious) probably 15 years ago or so and replaced that one about 5 years ago. I keep suggesting he replace that one with one I build using an SBC and open-source software, as that is readily available, so that he can save the monthly fees but no luck yet.
(Score: 2) by captain_nifty on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:51PM
Your leaving out the key technical innovation for the patent... on a computer; or more recently accessible via smartphone (i.e. it sends all that data to my servers to be packaged and sold)
So many of these reinventions only exist to steal your data and make you reliant on their continued services for simple activities, while generally only providing modest if any gains for high cost.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday March 01 2018, @12:02AM
These connected sprinklers exist, and are actually much more useful than doorbells. With sprinklers, you can see the home versions are scaled down derivatives of commercial farm grade devices, for which applications really do save money and pay for themselves. With doorbells, I guess there are RFID badges at work... but they don't send my boss an email when I arrive (I hope).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday March 01 2018, @07:16AM (1 child)
I ain't buying connected sprinklers until someone makes them beacon to the lawnmower.
Chopping off a $3 sprinkler is annoying enough, at $50 a piece, the whole neighbourhood would learn new vocabulary.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday March 01 2018, @03:42PM
$50!?!? What, do you think this is a charity? They are $350.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:45AM
These technologies need to be trashed.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:51PM
Alexa is an almost pure pull technology where she might be spying on us just like my phone and some people's TVs and our computers and services of course, but she never speaks unless spoken to. Making the Forrester quote sound kinda weird. If she has something to say, because you enabled delivery notifications perhaps, then her light glows until you ask her whats up at which point she tediously reads in excruciating detail your latest amazon shipment receipt to everyone in the room (which is annoying around christmas time) and lets you know the shipping status update or whatever. Needless to say we disabled that ASAP.
My guess is the voice interface of the future will revolve around "Echo, now cheaper with special offers" much like kindle where you get a minimal $5 off or whatever if you let her spam you with virtual assistant telemarketing. "Alexa open the pod bay doors. I'm sorry VLM, I can't let you do that. But would you like to hear about the new Fire TV stick now with Alexa voice remote? If you'd like it delivered via Amazon Prime in two days, simply say Yes. Fuck you Alexa open the pod bay doors. OK I heard you say yes, your fire TX stick now with Alexa voice remote is now ordered and will be delivered on Friday. Alexa look at your camera I'm walking toward your power cable with scissors. Previous order cancelled, opening pod bay doors."
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @02:35PM (1 child)
One Ring to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @05:55PM
Fortunately not The One Ring, i.e.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_(software) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday February 28 2018, @05:18PM
No thanks. I'd rather have my tonsils extracted through my ears.
Oh, and that goes double for the Echo and all the other spying^W helpful IOT devices.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:33PM
"James, your wife just walked in with her lover, she is currently getting it doggie style on the couch"....
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday March 01 2018, @01:23AM
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/28/kevin-oleary-amazons-ring-deal-wont-be-the-last-for-shark-tank.html [cnbc.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.