Amazon’s Recent Acquisitions Highlight the Value of Consumer Data (and Evolving Privacy Issues)
About two weeks apart, on July 21, 2022 and August 5, 2022, respectively, Amazon made headlines for agreeing to acquire One doctor“a human-centered, technology-based primary care organization,” for approximately $3.9 billion and I Robot, a global consumer robot company, best known for creating the Roomba vacuum cleaner, for approximately $1.7 billion. These takeover proposals drew the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) auditthan after 2021 of President Biden Executive order in antitrust and competition law, has taken a more aggressive stance against takeovers by large technology companies in an attempt to, in The words of the president of the FTC Lina Khan“prevent incumbents from illegally gaining control over emerging markets”.
Antitrust issues aside, Amazon’s recent acquisition decisions once again bring to the fore the discussion of consumer intelligence gathering and its secondary uses, especially location and health data (which we’ve previously written about). previously).
Read the full post on our privacy law blog.