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Regulators Killed a Lifeline for Roombas
Reason magazine
|May 2024
IN JANUARY 2024, Amazon terminated its agreement to acquire iRobot, the company that manufactures the Roomba robot vacuum.
That company then laid off nearly one-third of its work force. In a joint statement, the companies said they saw “no path to regulatory approval in the European Union.” But busybody American lawmakers also helped scuttle the deal.
Under the August 2022 acquisition agreement, Amazon intended to purchase iRobot for $1.65 billion. At that time, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the European Commission separately began investigating the proposed merger.
This story is from the May 2024 edition of Reason magazine.
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