Ring will be stepping up its efforts to make its security products secure for users by enabling end-to-end video encryption later this year. The company will be providing this toggle in a new page in tits app’s Control Center, which will provide more information about Ring’s current encryption practices, and measures to keep user video secure, until the end-to-end encryption feature goes live. Ring is also taking the covers off a range of new devices today – including its first drone – but Ring CEO and founder Jamie Siminoff says that this new security measure could actually make the biggest difference to its customers.

“[End-to-end encryption] could be our most important product that we’re sort of putting out there, because security and privacy, and user control are foundational to Ring, and continuing to push those further than even the industry, and really even pushing the res of the industry, is something I think that we have a responsibility to do.”

Siminoff also points to Ring’s introduction of mandatory two-factor authentication earlier this year as something that’s above and beyond the standard across the industry. I asked him them why not make end-to-end encryption for video on by default, with an opt-out option instead if users feel strongly that they don’t want to take part.

“Privacy, as you know, is really individualized – we see people have different needs,” he said. Just one example for end-to-end, is thatwhen you enable it, you cannot use your Alexa to say ‘Show me who’s at the front door,’ because of the physics of locking down to an end-to-end key. As soon as you do something like that, it would actually break what you’re trying to achieve. So it really is something that is optional, because it doesn’t fit every user in terms of the way in which they want to use the product. But there are some users  that really do want this type of security – so I think what you’re going to see from us in the future, and I hope the industry as well, is just really allowing people to dial in the security that they want, and having transparency, which is also with the Video Control Center that we’ve launched today to provide you with the knowledge of what’s happening with your data, in this case with Ring videos.”

Overall, Siminoff said that the company hopes through all of its products, to be able to provide its users to build the system that they want to use, its the way that they want to use it. The Alway Home Cam drone, he points out, is another expression of that, since it provides the potential to monitor every room in your home – but also the ability to be selective about when and where.

“I think it’s just about building the options to allow people to use technology – but use it comfortably, understand it, and control it,” he said.

Amazon -owned Ring is expanding from home and neighborhood security to the automative world, with three new products it debuted today at Amazon’s expansive devices and services extravaganza. These include Ring Car Alarm, Ring Car Cam, and Ring Car Connect – two new devices and one API/hardware combo aimed at automotive manufacturers, respectively. Each of these will be available beginning sometime next year.

“Truly since we started Ring, and even back in Doorbot days, people were asking for automotive security,” explained Ring CEO and founder Jamie Siminoff in an interview. “It was something that we always kind of had top of mind, but obviously we had to get a lot of other things done first – it does take time to build a product, and to do them right. So while it did take us some time to get into it, our mission is making neighborhoods safer, and a lot of the stuff that happens to cars happens in the neighborhood.”

Siminoff said that he’s especially pleased to be able to launch not just one, but a full suite of car security products that he feels covers the needs of just about any customer out there. Ring Car Alarm is an OBD-II wireless device that can detect any bumps while the car’s unoccupied, or even break-ins and when the car’s begin towed. Ring Car Cam is a security camera, which can work either via wifi, or LTE available via an add-on plan, and check for incidents while parked, or offer emergency crash detection and traffic stop recording when on the road. Finally, Ring Car Connect is an API and aftermarket device for carmakers that allows them to integrate a vehicle’s built-in cameras, and lock/unlock state.

I asked Siminoff why start right out the gate with three separate products, especially in a new market that Ring’s entering for the first time.

“As we started looking into it more, we realized that really, it wasn’t a one-size-fits all kind of product line, even to start,” he said. “We realized that it really was about trying to build more of a suite of products around the car. At Ring. we try to – and I won’t say we hit this 100% of time – but we’ve certainly tried to only launch something when it’s truly inventive, differentiated for the market, fits our mission and can really make a customer’s life better.”

[gallery ids="2051119,2051116"]

The products definitely span a range of price points – Ring Car Alarm will retail for $59.99, while Car Cam and Car Connect will both be $199.99. Ring Car Alarm is obviously aimed at the broadest swath of customers, and provides a fundamental feature set that can work in concert with the Ring app to hopefully provide deterrents to potential criminal activity around a user’s vehicle. The device sends alerts to the Ring app, and they can then trigger aa series if they want. Car Alarm can also be linked up to other Ring devices, or Amazon Alexa hardware, and Alexa will provide audible alerts of any bumps, break-ins or other events. Ring Car Alarm will require connectivity via Amazon Sidewalk, the low-bandwidth, and free wireless network protocol that Ring’s parent company is set to take live sometime later this year.

Ring Car Cam goes the extra mile of actually letting a user check in on their vehicle via video – provided they’re either within range of a wifi network, or connected via the optional built-in LTE with a companion plan. It also provides additional security features when the car in which it’s installed is actually in use. Ring’s Emergency Crash Assist feature will alert first responders to the car’s location whenever it detects what it determines to be a serious crash. Also, you can use the voice command “Alexa, I’m being pulled over” to trigger an automatic recording in case of a traffic stop, which is automatically uploaded to the cloud (again, provided you’ve got active connectivity.). On the privacy side, there’s a physical shutter on the camera itself for when you don’t want it in use, which also stops the mic from recording.

Finally, Ring Car Connect consists of an API that car manufacturers use to provide Ring customers access to mobile alerts for any detected events around their vehicle, or to watch footage recorded from their onboard cameras. This also allows access to information that wouldn’t be available with a strictly aftermarket setup – like whether the car is locked or unlocked, for instance. Ring’s first automaker partner for this is Tesla, which is enabling Ring Car Connect across the 3, X, S and Y models. Users will install an aftermarket device coming in 2021 for $199.99, but then they’ll be able to watch Tesla Sentry Mode footage, as well as video recorded while driving, directly in the Ring app.

Image Credits: Ring

Ring’s security ecosystem has grown from the humble doorbell, to whole-home (now, much more now) and exterior, to a full-fledged alarm service, and now to the car. It’s definitely not resting on its laurels. And it’s also releasing a $29.99 mailbox sensor, which will quite literally tell you when “You’ve got mail,” which is Iike a delightful little cherry on top.

Every year, Consumer Electronics Show attendees receive a branded backpack, but this year’s edition was special; made out of transparent plastic, the bag’s contents were visible without the wearer needing to unzip. It isn’t just a fashion decision. Over the years, security has become more intense and cumbersome, but attendees with transparent backpacks didn’t have to open their bags when entering.

That cheap backpack is a metaphor for an ongoing debate — how many of us are willing to exchange privacy for convenience?

Privacy was on everyone’s mind at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, from CEOs to policymakers, PR agencies and people in charge of programming the panels. For the first time in decades, Apple had a formal presence at the event; Senior Director of Global Privacy Jane Horvath spoke on a panel focused on privacy with other privacy leaders.

Ring is now a major player when it comes to consumer video doorbells, security cameras — and privacy protection.

Amazon acquired the company and promotes its devices heavily on its e-commerce websites. Ring has even become a cultural phenomenon with viral videos being shared on social networks and the RingTV section on the company’s website.

But that massive success has come with a few growing pains; as Motherboard found out, customers don’t have to use two-factor authentication, which means that anybody could connect to their security camera if they re-use the same password everywhere.

When it comes to privacy, Ring’s Neighbors app has attracted a ton of controversy. Some see it as a libertarian take on neighborhood watch that empowers citizens to monitor their communities using surveillance devices.

Others have questioned partnerships between Ring and local police to help law enforcement authorities request videos from Ring users.

In a wide-ranging interview, Ring founder Jamie Siminoff looked back at the past six months, expressed some regrets and defended his company’s vision. The interview was edited for clarity and brevity.

TechCrunch: Let’s talk about news first. You started mostly focused on security cameras, but you’ve expanded way beyond security cameras. And in particular, I think the light bulb that you introduced is pretty interesting. Do you want to go deeper in this area and go head to head against Phillips Hue for instance?

Jamie Siminoff: We try not to ever look at competition — like the company is going head to head with… we’ve always been a company that has invented around a mission of making neighborhoods safer.

Sometimes, that puts us into a place that would be competing with another company. But we try to look at the problem and then come up with a solution and not look at the market and try to come up with a competitive product.

No one was making — and I still don’t think there’s anyone making — a smart outdoor light bulb. We started doing the floodlight camera and we saw how important light was. We literally saw it through our camera. With motion detection, someone will come over a fence, see the light and jump back over. We literally could see the impact of light.

So you don’t think you would have done it if it wasn’t a light bulb that works outside as well as inside?

For sure. We’ve seen the advantage of linking all the lights around your home. When you walk up on a step light and that goes off, then everything goes off at the same time. It’s helpful for your own security and safety and convenience.

The light bulbs are just an extension of the floodlight. Now again, it can be used indoor because there’s no reason why it can’t be used indoor.

Following Amazon’s acquisition, do you think you have more budget, you can hire more people and you can go faster and release all these products?

It’s not a budget issue. Money was never a constraint. If you had good ideas, you could raise money — I think that’s Silicon Valley. So it’s not money. It’s knowledge and being able to reach a critical mass.

As a consumer electronics company, you need to have specialists in different areas. You can’t just get them with money, you kind of need to have a big enough thing. For example, wireless antennas. We had good wireless antennas. We did the best we thought we could do. But we get into Amazon and they have a group that’s super highly focused on each individual area of that. And we make much better antennas today.

Our reviews are up across the board, our products are more liked by our customers than they were before. To me, that’s a good measure — after Amazon, we have made more products and they’re more beloved by our customers. And I think part of that is that we can tap into resources more efficiently.

And would you say the teams are still very separate?

Amazon is kind of cool. I think it’s why a lot of companies that have been bought by Amazon stay for a long time. Amazon itself is almost an amalgamation of a lot of little startups. Internally, almost everyone is a startup CEO — there’s a lot of autonomy there.

Ring is slowly expanding to Philips Hue’s territory by releasing its first traditional connected lightbulb that works both indoor and outdoor. The Amazon-owned company is also revamping outdoor lights with new models that have a solar panel so that you don’t have to recharge the battery.

While Ring is mostly known for its security cameras, the company has been building a portfolio of devices to make your home smarter — or at least more automated.

This year, Ring’s new products focus heavily on lighting products. The company is already selling connected pathlights, steplights, spotlights and floodlights to illuminate your garden like it’s daytime.

But many of those devices are receiving an upgrade today. The Solar Floodlight, Solar Steplight and Solar Pathlight are solar variants of the existing devices. Instead of having to recharge batteries, they all feature a tiny solar panel on top so that you don’t have to babysit their batteries. You can also pair them with motion sensors.

The big new addition is a standard A19 smart lightbulb as well as a PAR38 smart lightbulb. You can use those lightbulbs outside, but they could work particularly well indoor as well. You can group them, control them with Alexa, remotely turn them on and off and adjust the brightness.

All the new lights will be available on April 1. Ring isn’t talking about prices just yet.

Ring is also launching a new device called the Ring Access Controller Pro — it is available today for $300. It works with electronically-controlled gates so that you can open and close gates directly from the Ring app. This way, you can put a Ring doorbell in front of your gate, pushing your visitors further away from your front door…

Ring says it could be particularly convenient for Amazon deliveries as the Ring Access Controller Pro works with Key by Amazon, the feature that lets you authorize home access to delivery persons.

Some privacy news

And then, there’s the elephant in the room — security and privacy. As Motherboard reported, Ring isn’t doing enough when it comes to securing access to user accounts — two-factor authentication isn’t mandatory for instance. And yet, you don’t want a random person to connect to a live video feed of your living room — or worse, your bedroom.

Ring is going to add a new section in its mobile app called Control Center. Users will be able to see and manage mobile, desktop and tablet devices that have recently accessed your account. For instance, you’ll be able to disconnect devices from your account.

The new menu will also show you third-party services that can access your Ring account, pretty much like third-party apps on Facebook or Twitter.

Finally, local police can request videos in some areas using the Neighbors app. That feature has attracted a ton of controversy. Users will be able to opt out of video requests from local police — it’s a baby step, but maybe it’s time to rethink the feature altogether.

Those new features feel a bit rushed as they aren’t available just yet. Ring says that the update should roll out later this month.

Amazon’s Ring is partnering with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the U.S. to publish missing child posters directly in the Neighbors app by Ring. The free app is used by local communities to share news about local crime and other safety incidents and is accessible to everyone, not just people who own a Ring video doorbell or camera.

NCMEC today works to recover missing children in the U.S. by operating a 24-hour hotline (1-800-THE-LOST) and it shares information about missing kids through AMBER Alerts and social media posts. The new partnership with Ring will expand NCMEC’s reach to the app’s community, which includes millions of people in the U.S. That community, of course, includes Ring video doorbell and security camera owners — people who may have critical information to share with NCMEC.

Ring notes it recently helped reunite a family with a missing child in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This particular case, however, didn’t involve an abduction. Instead, the missing 14-year old boy had been waiting for his dad to pick him up at the wrong gas station after a football game. The child didn’t have a working phone or his parents’ numbers, so had no way to phone for help when dad didn’t show. And he didn’t ask for help. The family contacted the police and posted a notice to the Ring Neighbors app. Another app user had seen the child and alerted his parents to his whereabouts.

With the new partnership, NCMEC looks to formalize this same sort of information-sharing that already takes place in Ring’s Neighbors app, as users reshare notices and alerts they saw elsewhere with community members, or post for help about their own missing kids, as in the above case.

Ring says the NCMEC’s missing kids posters will become visible to all users whose neighborhoods fall within the area of interest. The posts will also prompt users to contact the authorities if they have any information that could help the search.

According to the FBI, there were 424,066 cases of missing kids reported to law enforcement in 2018, Ring adds.

The partnership comes at a time when Ring’s public image is in need of rehab.

The Amazon-owned company has been criticized for its deals with police which invited a congressional investigation, as well as for its plans around the potential use of facial recognition technology. More recently, Ring doorbells were found to have exposed home Wi-Fi passwords to hackers. And because Ring doesn’t require increased security measures like two-factor authentication (it’s optional), hackers who had acquired username and passwords for Ring devices used that information to attack and harass customers across the U.S.

These attacks led to a number of consumer and privacy groups to issue a product warning about Ring cameras this week, which also noted that Ring’s hidden data — shared by its Neighbors app — includes the location of devices. 

Despite these serious concerns, Ring has an active and growing user base for its Neighbors app, which continues to see installs in the hundreds of thousands every month. More than 10 million Ring doorbells, meanwhile, have been installed worldwide.

Over 30 civil rights organizations have penned an open letter that calls on government officials to investigate Amazon Ring’s business practices and end the company’s numerous police partnerships. The letter follows a report by The Washington Post in August that detailed how over 400 police forces across the U.S. have partnered with Ring to gain access to homeowners’ camera footage.

These partnerships have already raised concerns with privacy advocates and civil liberties organizations, who claim the agreements turn neighbors into informants and subject innocent people to greater risk and surveillance.

Had the government itself installed a video network of this size and scope, it would have drawn greater scrutiny. But by quietly working with Ring behind the scenes, law enforcement gets to tap into a massive surveillance network without being directly involved in its creation.

The new letter from the civil rights groups demand that government officials put an end to these behind-the-scenes deals between Amazon and the police.

“With no oversight and accountability, Amazon’s technology creates a seamless and easily automated experience for police to request and access footage without a warrant, and then store it indefinitely,” the letter reads. “In the absence of clear civil liberties and rights-protective policies to govern the technologies and the use of their data, once collected, stored footage can be used by law enforcement to conduct facial recognition searches, target protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, teenagers for minor drug possession, or shared with other agencies like ICE or the FBI,” it says.

Additionally, the letter points out these police deals involve Amazon coaching cops on how to obtain surveillance footage without a warrant. It also notes that Ring allowed employees to share unencrypted customer videos with each other, including in offices based in Ukraine. And it raises concerns about Amazon’s potential plans to integrate facial recognition features into Ring cameras, based on patents it filed.

The groups also point to the map released by Amazon Ring, which now shows over 500 cities with Amazon-police partnerships across the U.S.

The groups’ letter is not the first to demand action.

Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) also last month wrote to Amazon to get more information about Ring and its relationships with law enforcement agencies.

But unlike Sen. Markey’s investigative letter to Amazon’s Ring, today’s letter has specific demands for action. The groups are asking mayors and city council members to require their local police departments to cancel their Ring partnerships. The groups also want local government officials to pass new surveillance oversight ordinances that will ensure police departments can’t enter into any such partnerships in the future.

And they want Congress to investigate Ring’s dealings with police more closely.

The letter itself was published online and signed by the following organizations:

Fight for the Future, Media Justice, Color of Change, Secure Justice, Demand Progress, Defending Rights & Dissent, Muslim Justice League, X-Lab, Media Mobilizing Project, Restore The Fourth, Inc., Media Alliance, Youth Art & Self Empowerment Project, Center for Human Rights and Privacy, Oakland Privacy, Justice For Muslims Collective, The Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), Nation Digital Inclusion Alliance, Project On Government Oversight, OpenMedia, Council on American-Islamic Relations-SFBA, Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, MPower Change, Mijente, Access Humboldt, RAICES, National Immigration Law Center, The Tor Project, United Church of Christ, Office of Communication Inc., the Constitutional Alliance, RootsAction.org, CREDO Action, Presente.org, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and United We Dream.

According to Evan Greer, Deputy Director at Fight for the Future, the letter has not yet been mailed. But the plan, going forward, is to use it in local organizing when groups on the ground make deliveries to local officials in cities where the partnerships are live.

“Amazon has created the perfect end-run around our democratic process by entering into for-profit surveillance partnerships with local police departments. Police departments have easy access to surveillance networks without oversight or accountability,” said Greer. “Amazon Ring’s customers provide the company with the footage needed to build their privately owned, nationwide surveillance dragnet. We’re the ones who pay the cost – as they violate our privacy rights and civil liberties. Our elected officials are supposed to protect us, both from abusive policing practices and corporate overreach. These partnerships are a clear case of both,” Greer added.

Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) is looking for answers from Amazon about its doorbell camera Ring and the company’s relationships with law enforcement agencies around the U.S. In a letter published on Thursday, he writes to the technology giant how partnerships like Ring’s raise “serious privacy and civil liberties concerns,” and asks Amazon to further detail the size and scope of its numerous deals with police.

The Senator’s attention was drawn to the issue following a recent report by The Washington Post. The report revealed that Ring had entered into some 400 video-sharing partnerships with U.S. police forces, which granted the police access to the footage from the homeowners’ internet-connected video cameras.

The police cannot tap into live or on ongoing footage, and the homeowners can choose to decline police requests, the report also said.

However, the partnerships raised concerns from privacy advocates who believe the program could threaten civil liberties, turn residents into informants, and subject innocent people to greater surveillance and risk, The Washington Post noted.

The same kind of network of surveillance cameras would draw more scrutiny if the police or the government had installed it themselves, but by working with Ring they’re not directly involved.

In a letter dated Thursday, September 5, 2019, Senator Markey questions the use targeted language that encourages Ring owners to opt in to the video-sharing program with police, as well as the way Amazon actively courts law enforcement to increase its use of the Ring system. Sen. Markey additionally points out that Amazon seems to be increasingly working with U.S. police forces, like it did when marketing its facial recognition product, Rekognition.

“The scope and nature of Ring’s partnership with police forces raise additional civil liberties concerns. The integration of Ring’s network of cameras with law enforcement offices could easily create a surveillance network that places dangerous burdens on people of color and feeds racial anxieties in local communities,” Sen. Markey wrote. “I am particularly alarmed to learn that Ring is pursuing facial recognition technology with the potential to flag certain individuals as suspicious based on their biometric information,” he continued, referencing a patent Ring applied for last year that would catch “suspicious” people on camera.

“In light of evidence that existing facial recognition technology disproportionately misidentifies African Americans and Latinos, a product like this has the potential to catalyze racial profiling and harm people of color,” Markey said.

In the letter, the Senator asks Amazon to detail how long it’s been asking users to share footage with police, how those policies have changed, and which police departments it’s working with. He also asked for information about how this data was being stored, what safeguards are in place, whether the police are sharing that footage with other entities, whether Rekognition capabilities were coming to Ring, and more.

Markey also wants Ring to review its consent prompts for video-sharing with experts to make sure it’s not manipulating consumers into these agreements with police.

And he wants to know if Ring has worked with any experts in civil liberties, criminal justice or other relevant fields to review its doorbells and social network Neighbors to ensure they don’t present unique threats to people of color or other populations.

Ring would not be the first to create a home for racial profiling, though its connection to cameras makes it more of an actionable threat than other networks, like Nextdoor or Facebook Groups.

Nextdoor, for example, became well-known for issues around racial profiling, and eventually rolled out tools to try to stem the problem in its app. Crime-tracking app Citizen also faced controversies for creating a state of paranoid hypervigilance among its users — something that has long-term effects on how people perceive their world and those they share it with.

Sen. Markey gave Amazon until September 26, 2019 to respond to his questions.

SoftBank’s Vision Fund may be facing some challenges when it comes to restocking its massive reserves, but the firm famous for cutting big checks is leading a sizeable round for Collective Health. This startup focused on enterprise employee healthcare management announced a $205 million Series E raise today, brining its total funding to $434 million since its founding in 2013. Its last raise was a $110 million round in February, 2018.

Collective Healths’ client list includes Red Bull, Pinterest, Zendesk and more, and it counts GV, NEA, DFJ Growth and Sun Life among its financial backers. Its platform is an integrator for the various insurance and benefit providers that large employers offer to the their employees, and provides access to info, as well as claims filing, eligibility checks and data sharing across vendors. The funding will also help with additional engineering hires to continue to build out the platform.

The funding will help the company add more partner providers, a process that’s key to continued growth as it seeks to expand its footprint and ensure that it can serve customers and their employees across the U.S. In addition to the Vision Fund, this round included new investors PSP Investments, DFJ Growth, G Squared, as well as new participation from existing investors.

Ring’s new outdoor lighting products are impressive. It’s rare, even in 2019, for something to work out of the box, but that’s what happened when I installed Ring’s outdoor lighting products. They just worked.

You know the drill. You get a gadget and go to install it. Somewhere during the installation, it fails or hiccups. The thing doesn’t connect to Wifi, or it fails during an update, or something. Eventually, you’ll get it working after a few minor issues are solved.

Ring’s outdoor lighting products installed without issue. I took them out of the box, threw aside the instructions, and installed them in a logical manner. And 20 minutes later, I had five new lights configured to my home’s network and installed around my house. Brilliant.

This isn’t Ring’s first lighting product. TechCrunch tested Ring’s video spotlight last year and found it just as impressive with an easy installation and straight-forward feature set. Unlike that product, these new lights lack the camera, which make them significantly less expensive.

The new lighting products are clearly the result of Ring’s purchase of Mr. Beams. The company purchased the lighting company in January 2018 before Amazon purchased Ring in February 2018. Like Mr. Beams lights, Ring’s new lights are just a light and a motion sensor. The lighting products are a natural extension of Ring’s offering and best yet they’re relatively inexpensive.

These lighting products lack cameras found in the rest of Ring’s products but still have motion sensors that work in conjunction with Ring’s cameras. If, say, the $25 step light senses motion, it kicks on the light but can also trigger a Ring camera to start recording. Likewise, if a Ring camera notices movement, it will begin recording but also trigger a series of lights to turn on.

The products are priced competitively considering their set of features. A small steplight is $25, a pathway light is $29, a big spotlight is $40, and a floodlight is $50. A $50 bridge is required to connect the lights to a local network. Or, if you want to connect existing low-voltage landscape lighting to the system, Ring sells a $100 transformer.

There are similar products on the market. Ring’s offering is not unique, but its integration and ease of installation set it apart. The new outdoor lighting products is a significant addition to Ring’s ecosystem, which now includes security lighting, indoor and outdoor cameras, security systems, and, of course, a video doorbell.

Among the slew of devices Amazon announced this morning at its event in Seattle is a new Ring Stick Up Cam – stick up, because it’s designed to go anywhere. (And is not, apparently, a reference to being robbed at gunpoint?) The camera comes in two versions – one that’s battery-powered and could be more easily used outdoors, as well as one that’s wired, which may make more sense indoors.

The device also supports power over internet, so if your house is wired for that specifically, you’ll have another option to power the device, Amazon says.

The company didn’t detail many specs for this device – we’ll add those later, as they become available.

These devices, which come in both black and white, will be available later this year.

They’ll cost $179.99 and be available in the UK, US, France, Germany, Australia and a number of other countries around the world.

Check out our full coverage from the event here.

In a truly fascinating exploration into two smart speakers – the Sonos One and the Amazon Echo – BoltVC’s Ben Einstein has found some interesting differences in the way a traditional speaker company and an infrastructure juggernaut look at their flagship devices.

The post is well worth a a full read but the gist is this: Sonos, a very traditional speaker company, has produced a good speaker and modified its current hardware to support smart home features like Alexa and Google Assistant. The Sonos One, notes Einstein, is a speaker first and smart hardware second.

“Digging a bit deeper, we see traditional design and manufacturing processes for pretty much everything. As an example, the speaker grill is a flat sheet of steel that’s stamped, rolled into a rounded square, welded, seams ground smooth, and then powder coated black. While the part does look nice, there’s no innovation going on here,” he writes.

The Amazon Echo, on the other hand, looks like what would happen if an engineer was given an unlimited budget and told to build something that people could talk to. The design decisions are odd and intriguing and it is ultimately less a speaker than a home conversation machine. Plus it is very expensive to make.

Pulling off the sleek speaker grille, there’s a shocking secret here: this is an extruded plastic tube with a secondary rotational drilling operation. In my many years of tearing apart consumer electronics products, I’ve never seen a high-volume plastic part with this kind of process. After some quick math on the production timelines, my guess is there’s a multi-headed drill and a rotational axis to create all those holes. CNC drilling each hole individually would take an extremely long time. If anyone has more insight into how a part like this is made, I’d love to see it! Bottom line: this is another surprisingly expensive part.

Sonos, which has been making a form of smart speaker for fifteen years, is a CE company with cachet. Amazon, on the other hand, sees its devices as a way into living rooms and a delivery system for sales and is fine with licensing its tech before making its own. Therefore to compare the two is a bit disingenuous. Einstein’s thesis that Sonos’ trajectory is troubled by the fact that it depends on linear and closed manufacturing techniques while Amazon spares no expense to make its products is true. But Sonos makes speakers that work together amazingly well. They’ve done this for a decade and a half. If you compare their products – and I have – with competing smart speakers an non-audiophile “dumb” speakers you will find their UI, UX, and sound quality surpass most comers.

Amazon makes things to communicate with Amazon. This is a big difference.

Where Einstein is correct, however, is in his belief that Sonos is at a definite disadvantage. Sonos chases smart technology while Amazon and Google (and Apple, if their HomePod is any indication) lead. That said, there is some value to having a fully-connected set of speakers with add-on smart features vs. having to build an entire ecosystem of speaker products that can take on every aspect of the home theatre.

On the flip side Amazon, Apple, and Google are chasing audio quality while Sonos leads. While we can say that in the future we’ll all be fine with tinny round speakers bleating out Spotify in various corners of our room, there is something to be said for a good set of woofers. Whether this nostalgic love of good sound survives this generation’s tendency to watch and listen to low resolution media is anyone’s bet, but that’s Amazon’s bet to lose.

Ultimately Sonos is strong and fascinating company. An upstart that survived the great CE destruction wrought by Kickstarter and Amazon, it produces some of the best mid-range speakers I’ve used. Amazon makes a nice – almost alien – product, but given that it can be easily copied and stuffed into a hockey puck that probably costs less than the entire bill of materials for the Amazon Echo it’s clear that Amazon’s goal isn’t to make speakers.

Whether the coming Sonos IPO will be successful depends partially on Amazon and Google playing ball with the speaker maker. The rest depends on the quality of product and the dedication of Sonos users. This good will isn’t as valuable as a signed contract with major infrastructure players but Sonos’ good will is far more than Amazon and Google have with their popular but potentially intrusive product lines. Sonos lives in the home while Google and Amazon want to invade it. That is where Sonos wins.