Amazon Eero

Amazon announced that it was acquiring smart router, Eero. The router creates a mesh network similar to Google WiFi. This acquisition makes a lot of sense and fills out the offering by Amazon into a clean Amazon stack. WiFi router and devices will come from the same company.

WiFi plug, Ring camera, Echo, FireTV — all connecting to the same hub. As well, a router provides all kinds of information on what other devices are connected to it, the patterns of traffic, and even details on what is being sent when the traffic is unencrypted.

There might be some interesting things Amazon can do with AWS if it knows who is access its services from where. Perhaps it could use these routers to pre-cache pages locally on device? I remember being enthralled with the Silk browser when it came out on Fire Tablet in 2011. It could preload / cache pages in the cloud so that they would render more quickly on device.

Eight years on, Amazon has another opportunity to do this by caching sites locally on the router (or maybe media for consumption by the Echo?). At the very least, it will have a better picture of what’s happening around the home.