Amazon acquires Ring’s smart doorbell business

The big tech companies continue to gobble up the competition. Reuters is reporting that Amazon has agreed to acquire Ring for more than $1 billion. Ring is a company best known for doorbell security cameras, but they also offer other smart home devices. The smart home market is very important to Amazon, and now they have one of the biggest up-and-coming players.

Ring is expected to operate under its own branding like business as usual. We can expect to see a much greater integration with Amazon products and services. Ring already integrates with Amazon Alexa really well. If you’re an existing Ring user, you probably won’t notice anything different. The acquisition ensures that your Ring services will be working for a long time.

The problem with this acquisition is something that has been happening in the tech industry for a while. “Success” for startups is no longer defined by how well the business does. It’s defined by getting acquired by Amazon or Google. Companies like Ring and Nest start small and become successful, but instead of taking on the big dogs head-to-head, they get absorbed.