Moreover, it seems that the company does not want to stop expanding its reach. In recent weeks, Amazon announced that it would spend billions of dollars on two massive acquisitions that, if approved, would further increase their presence in consumers’ lives.
Recently, the company is targeting two fields: healthcare, through the acquisition of One Medical for $3.9 billion, and the “smart home” sector, where they plan to expand their already strong presence through a $1.7 billion merger with iRobot, the maker of the popular Roomba robotic vacuum.
Although Amazon has long been known for its massive user database, both of these new mergers are raising long-standing privacy concerns about how Amazon collects data and what they do with it. For instance, the latest Roomba robot line uses mapping sensors to remember the floor plan of the user’s home.
Ron Knox, a critic of Amazon who works for the anti-monopoly group, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, stated: “Amazon will acquire an enormous dataset collected by Roomba Robot about people’s homes, and through all the other products they sell to consumers.”
However, in reality, Amazon’s reach goes even further. Some estimates suggest that the retail giant controls about 38% of the U.S. e-commerce market, allowing them to gather detailed data on the shopping preferences of millions of Americans and many more worldwide. Meanwhile, the company’s Echo devices, including the voice assistant Alexa, dominate the U.S. smart speaker market, accounting for about 70% of sales, according to estimates from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.
Ring, which Amazon acquired in 2018 for $1 billion, monitors doorsteps and assists police in tracking down criminals, even if users may not be aware of it. Particularly, in some Amazon and Whole Foods stores, the company is testing palm-scanning technology that allows customers to pay for items by storing biometric data in the cloud, raising concerns about the data breach risks that Amazon has tried to assure.
And even if consumers actively “avoid” Amazon, they still might not escape the clutches of this tech giant. Amazon has long dominated cloud services with AWS alongside Google.
Ian Greenblatt, head of technology research at the data analytics and consumer research company JD Power, said: “It’s hard to find another organization that has as many touchpoints with an individual as Amazon.”
Meanwhile, Kristen Martin, a professor of technology ethics at Notre Dame University, commented: “For companies like Amazon, data collection is not just for the sake of data. They are trying to paint a broader picture of an individual.”
Analysts are trying to evaluate Amazon from the most objective standpoint. However, most believe that, unlike Meta and Google, which primarily focus on selling ads, Amazon may benefit more from data collection as their main goal is to sell products.
Alex Harman, competition policy director of the antitrust group American Economic Security Project, argues: “For Amazon, data will make you buy more and lock you into their products.”
Overall, Amazon is becoming increasingly frightening…