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Amazon purchased Ring for market place, not technology, e-mails say.
On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee held its final meeting as part of a year-long inquiry into anti-competitive conduct in the technology industry. As part of the study, senators obtained about 1.3 million papers from Amazon , Apple, Twitter , and Google in advance of a final meeting, including the chief executives of each company. Tens of these papers were released on Wednesday, including email threads involving CEO Jeff Bezos and other Amazon executives detailing the company's decision to purchase Ring.
Feel good at going ahead with Ring due diligence, ready to pay for market place because it's hard to grab the king, said Jeff Helbling, Amazon Vice President, in an email dated October 11, 2017. Amazon formally acquired Ring in February 2018.
Amazon's purchase of Ring not only made it easy for the e-commerce giant to access home security systems and apps, it also created a new platform for its own voice assistant, Alexa. After buying Ring, Amazon incorporated its Alexa voice assistant into the units, enabling consumers to monitor their video doorbells by voice and extend the company's role as a leader of Internet-connected homes.
But emails indicate that, at the moment, Bezos regarded the importance of the Ring as largely political. "To be sure, my opinion here is that we are purchasing market position — not technologies, Bezos wrote in an email four months before Ring was purchased by the group. And the market share and traction are really important.
Bezos said during Wednesday 's meeting that Amazon buys other businesses primarily for market position. There are some explanations why we may be buying a product, Bezos said. Sometimes we want to acquire a hardware or IP, sometimes it's a talent acquisition. However, the most prevalent situation is the business place
Amazon did not respond immediately to a request for comments.
During the course of Wednesday 's meeting, Amazon attracted scrutiny from senators who worried that the e-commerce giant might have reached into independent retailer data to support its own marketing decisions. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Amazon workers had access to sales data from third-party suppliers to drive the production of private label products.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) asked Bezos specifically, Will Amazon ever have access to and consumer vendor data while taking business decisions? Bezos replied that Amazon has a policy to prohibit the activity, but he could not "guarantee" her the the policy has never been broken. He added, We have to look at it very closely.
I'm not sure that we got to the bottom of it yet.
