Amazon announced today that it is purchasing eero, one of the pioneers in the mesh WiFi universe right now. Amazon has not announced how much it is paying for eero, or any of the other details of this deal, other than the fact that it is making this purchase. However, Amazon did mention that it is purchasing eero to make it easier to connect smart home products.
The purchase of eero goes right in-line with its recent purchase of Ring, about a year ago. Ring is known for its smart video doorbells and has now expanded into making regular security cameras for your home. Amazon also already makes some smart home products through its AmazonBasics brand – like its smart plug and microwave. Now, it needs a way for users to connect all of these products. That’s where eero comes in.
eero is not one of the most popular names, but when it comes to mesh WiFi, it is. That’s surprising, considering the fact that TP-Link, Linksys and NETGEAR are all in that space, and are companies that have been making routers for many years – decades even. eero is popular because it makes it super simple to set up a WiFi network. Allowing customers to take their new eero out of the box and have it fully set up and usable within 10 minutes. This is thanks to the eero app, which controls everything about the network.
It’s a mesh network, so it utilizes multiple access points that are in a mesh pattern. This allows the router to blanket your home in WiFi. But that’s not all that mesh networks are good for. They are also good at controlling multiple products being connected to your network. And that’s where smart home products come into play.
Mesh networks are able to optimize which band a certain device needs to be on. For example, your smart lights don’t need as much bandwidth as your laptop, but it does need more coverage. Therefore, eero will put it onto the 2.4GHz band which offers more coverage and slower speeds, compared to the 5GHz. Making your network perform better in the long run.
That is why Amazon wants eero. It wants eero for the smart home industry that it is revolutionizing. Since Amazon was a bit late in creating its own smart home products – though it does have a number of hubs you can buy – it is instead buying up companies to bring those products to them. First Ring and now eero. Two vastly different companies on the outside, but they will work together in Amazon’s vision quite well.
eero was one of the first to embrace mesh WiFi, launching its first-generation mesh WiFi system in 2016, and a second in 2017. Now it has gotten Amazon’s attention and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the third-generation eero come with Alexa built-in. After all, NETGEAR already did that wit its new Orbi Voice last year – a Mesh WiFi satellite for Orbi, that is also a smart speaker and has Alexa built-in.
Neither Amazon nor eero has announced when it expects the deal to close. More information about this deal should be available in the coming weeks, however.