[MarkusQ]

Not every story needs to have a bad guy.

In many cases (I suspect this is one of them) there is room for multiple bad guys. Why couldn't the FTC, Roomba Management, Wall Street, China, etc. all be at fault? Seems like it fits the evidence nicely.

[derbOac]

Maybe this is naive on my part but I find an argument like "the EU and FTC raised their metaphorical eyebrows at us and so we had to fold rather than merge" sort of pathetic.

I think the idea of Amazon buying Roomba causing monopoly concerns is kinda weird. But I also think it's absurd for anyone to blame the FTC for this. Amazon had enough leverage and money to take on the FTC over this, and probably could have made the FTC look laughable in the process, if they pushed antitrust. The fact that they didn't says everything about the actual value of Roomba.

[sleight42]

Your point was most of my read on the article.

Yet the root problem seems structural: the misplaced incentives of the quarterly earnings-driven stock market. Short term gains most often win over long term innovation.

[itopaloglu83]

One thing I keep repeating is that Roomba subreddit was managed by the company and would ban people for life is they were to share any bad experiences or anything negative about the product.