Amazon Is Buying Mesh Router Company Eero

Amazon has announced that it's acquiring Eero, the maker of mesh home routers. 'Amazon says buying Eero will allow the company to 'help customers better connect smart home devices,'' reports The Verge. 'It will certainly make Alexa-compatible gadgets easier to set up if Amazon also controls the router technology. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed.' From the report: Eero kicked off a wave of 'smart' mesh router setups designed to overcome the coverage issues and dead zones of traditional routers. Instead of a single router device, multiple access points are used to blanket an entire home or apartment with a strong Wi-Fi signal. The system works as advertised, and it's all controlled with an intuitive smartphone app. Google, Samsung, Linksys, Netgear, and other electronics companies have since followed Eero's lead and released their own mesh bundles.

It sounds as though the Eero brand will live on after the acquisition -- at least in the near term. 'By joining the Amazon family, we're excited to learn from and work closely with a team that is defining the future of the home, accelerate our mission, and bring Eero systems to more customers around the globe,' said Nick Weaver, Eero's co-founder and CEO. Amazon isn't saying much about its future plans for Eero; might we see an Alexa-enabled router? An Echo that doubles as a Wi-Fi access point sounds nice. The report notes that Amazon will now have 'more valuable data on consumers and advance Amazon's growing dominance of the smart home.' Last year, Amazon acquired smart doorbell and camera maker Ring and bought Blink in 2017.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.