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Re:Amazon to acquire maker of Roomba vacuum for roughly $1.7B by zippergz on Friday August 05, 2022 @11:53AM (#32357915)
I've always felt like these products were mainly designed for people who live in single-level small-ish apartments, but then it's confusing because manually vacuuming those isn't very hard either. I just don't understand the market.
Re:Amazon to acquire maker of Roomba vacuum for roughly $1.7B by jedberg on Friday August 05, 2022 @01:06PM (#32358889)
It's for wealthy people who have large homes with large open spaces. People who have enough storage that they don't have clutter on the floor.

I grew up next to a neighborhood of 5000sf+ homes, and I never saw clutter in any of them. Some of them had house cleaners, but even the ones that didn't, they had storage everywhere, so everything got put away. A Roomba on every floor would be perfect for them.

I moved away before Roomba existed, but I imagine a lot of them have it.

Re:Amazon to acquire maker of Roomba vacuum for roughly $1.7B by zippergz on Friday August 05, 2022 @02:21PM (#32359886)
I have a large home with large open spaces and little clutter on the floor. But I'd need something like 8 Roombas to cover it all because of the changes in levels, doors that are normally closed, etc.

Also, as a semi-wealthy person with a large home, I hire people to clean it including vacuuming, and I don't need an annoying robot roaming the house to do it.

Re:Amazon to acquire maker of Roomba vacuum for roughly $1.7B by ghaff on Friday August 05, 2022 @01:38PM (#32359314)
I'm sure there's some correlation between wealth/space and lack of clutter. But my observation is that some people are just much more inclined not to leave a lot of loose things either on floors or table. I'm pretty sure I could have a house that was twice the size and it would still look very lived in.
Re:Amazon to acquire maker of Roomba vacuum for roughly $1.7B by ghaff on Friday August 05, 2022 @12:12PM (#32358172)
It's mostly my kitchen/dining room/"mudroom" area that can use regular quick vacs between full housecleanings. But looking right now I have some shoes and other things scattered around and it's literally about 3 minutes to do a touchup with my Dyson stick vac which has been great.