Amazon Ring CEO steps down five years after acquisition

Jamie Siminoff, the CEO of Amazon subsidiary Ring, is stepping down from the relation aboriginal this month, the institution announced Wednesday.

Siminoff volition instrumentality the relation of main inventor connected March 22, and Elizabeth Hamren volition win him arsenic CEO. Hamren astir precocious served arsenic COO of the chat app Discord, and has held enforcement roles astatine Microsoft's Xbox part and Meta's Oculus virtual world unit.

In summation to Ring, Hamren volition besides oversee Amazon Key, the company's in-home transportation service; shared web work Amazon Sidewalk; arsenic good arsenic Blink, different shaper of location information cameras that Amazon acquired successful 2017.

"Invention is my existent passion. I americium perpetually looking astatine however we tin accommodate to present for our neighbors, which is what we've ever called our customers," Siminoff wrote in a blog post. "This is wherefore I decided to displacement my relation to Chief Inventor and bring connected a caller CEO."

The determination comes 5 years aft Amazon acquired Ring for a reported $1 cardinal in 2018. The woody has helped Amazon turn its beingness successful the astute location and location information categories.

At the aforesaid time, property reports person raised scrutiny implicit Ring's information protocols and the technology's threats to user privacy.

In 2020, Ring said it fired 4 employees for peeping into lawsuit video feeds aft reports from The Intercept and The Information recovered that Ring staffers successful Ukraine were fixed unfettered entree to videos from Ring cameras astir the world.

The institution strengthened its information measures aft a bid of incidents wherein hackers gained entree to a fig of users' cameras. In 1 case, hackers were capable to ticker and pass with an 8-year aged girl. Ring blamed the contented connected users reusing their passwords.

Ring has besides drawn disapproval from privateness and civilian liberties advocates implicit a arguable concern with thousands of constabulary departments crossed the country. The programme allows constabulary and occurrence departments to petition video footage recorded by Ring cameras.

Privacy advocates have expressed concern that the program, and Ring's accompanying Neighbors app, person heightened the hazard of radical profiling and turned residents into informants, portion giving constabulary entree to footage without a warrant and with fewer guardrails astir however they tin usage the material.

Ring in 2021 began requiring constabulary to marque requests for videos oregon accusation nationalist successful the Neighbors app.

WATCH: Amazon's astute location dominance and however it could turn with iRobot acquisition