Alexa Is in Millions of Households - and Amazon Is Losing Billions (wsj.com) 104
Amazon's strategy to set prices low for Echo speakers and other smart devices, expecting them to generate income elsewhere in the tech giant, hasn't paid off [paywalled]. From a report: Amazon's Echo speakers are the type of business success companies don't want: a widely purchased product that is also a giant money loser. Chief Executive Andy Jassy is trying to plug that hole -- and move away from the Amazon accounting tactic that helped create it. When Amazon launched the Echo smart home devices with its Alexa voice assistant in 2014, it pulled a page from shaving giant Gillette's classic playbook: sell the razors for a pittance in the hope of making heaps of money on purchases of the refill blades.
A decade later, the payoff for Echo hasn't arrived. While hundreds of millions of customers have Alexa-enabled devices, the idea that people would spend meaningful amounts of money to buy goods on Amazon by talking to the iconic voice assistant on the underpriced speakers didn't take off. Customers actually used Echo mostly for free apps such as setting alarms and checking the weather. "We worried we've hired 10,000 people and we've built a smart timer," said a former senior employee.
As a result, Amazon has lost tens of billions of dollars on its devices business, which includes Echos and other products such as Kindles, Fire TV Sticks and video doorbells, according to internal documents and people familiar with the business. Between 2017 and 2021, Amazon had more than $25 billion in losses from its devices business, according to the documents. The losses for the years before and after that period couldn't be determined.
A decade later, the payoff for Echo hasn't arrived. While hundreds of millions of customers have Alexa-enabled devices, the idea that people would spend meaningful amounts of money to buy goods on Amazon by talking to the iconic voice assistant on the underpriced speakers didn't take off. Customers actually used Echo mostly for free apps such as setting alarms and checking the weather. "We worried we've hired 10,000 people and we've built a smart timer," said a former senior employee.
As a result, Amazon has lost tens of billions of dollars on its devices business, which includes Echos and other products such as Kindles, Fire TV Sticks and video doorbells, according to internal documents and people familiar with the business. Between 2017 and 2021, Amazon had more than $25 billion in losses from its devices business, according to the documents. The losses for the years before and after that period couldn't be determined.
Breakdown of losses by device would be nice (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope they aren't losing money on the e-ink Kindle, as these are great devices. Hard to see how they would be, they aren't that cheap for what they are so I doubt they are actually selling them at a loss. Much less in the way of cloud services behind them and that is mostly for selling (so generates revenue, unlike Alexa services). I wouldn't care if they killed off everything else in that list though.
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I have the Amazon Fire Cube, I think it's the second 4k version. Great device, also not too cheap though not terribly expensive. It's basically a combination Firestick and echo in one device that also has better storage and things like ethernet.
Re:Breakdown of losses by device would be nice (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't see how they lose a LOT of money on the Kindle paperwhite series. I mean, I think they could on the device. Just. I don't spend a lot of money (and i feel quite dirty doing so), but electronic book has almost no physical foot print. Largest cost would be paying the author/publisher. The margin of even a few ebooks would push the Kindle firmly in Amazon's favour.
Any sort of subscription and they would be "quids in".
I hate Amazon, for many reasons, including monopoly practices and treating labour in a less than human manner. I wish the Kindle was a crappy product so I could hate them even more. Thank the FSM for Calibre and being able to side-load.
Other devices, not so sure they have been, or even could be, monetised so well.
e readers (Score:2)
I can't see how they lose a LOT of money on the Kindle paperwhite series. {...} I hate Amazon, for many reasons, including monopoly practices and treating labour in a less than human manner. I wish the Kindle was a crappy product so I could hate them even more. Thank the FSM for Calibre and being able to side-load.
Other devices, not so sure they have been, or even could be, monetised so well.
The good thing is that there's nothing peculiar in Amazon's brand of "Kindle" e-readers. Save for the DRM, they are relatively generic.
And you find quite similar devices from, e.g, Kobo or Tolino, running respectively a Linux+QT userspace or Android.
My family and I, we have been using Kobos for quite some time. Just plug them in, and they show up as USB mas-storage, and you can drag-drop whatever you want on them (PDF, ePub, etc.) They support Adobe Digial Edition DRM out of the box, which is what your loca
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I don't spend a lot of money (and i feel quite dirty doing so)
Never apologize for not giving money to Amazon.
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Re:Breakdown of losses by device would be nice (Score:4, Informative)
IMO, though, they'd be better off just selling it as a standalone device that does reminders, timers, etc. and has no connection to any particular service.
THIS! Came here to say about the same thing.
Here's my ideal smart speaker thing feature list:
* can set and manage multiple timers
* if it has a display, display the timers well (FYI, echo show devices put a tiny little banner with the timer up top and a big ad / rotating cards taking up the rest of the screen)
* can get weather info (now, tonight, tomorrow, and in other locations)
* handle reminders
* handle lists (shopping list, custom lists), and tie into 3rd party list software (FYI, Amazon's device supports this somewhat already)
* play music from various services
* integrate with home automation stuff (turn lights on/off, etc..). Maybe implement this as a proxy to other services/servers, so it could work with Home Assistant and such as a voice-to-text-to-API interface.
* doesn't follow up with ads for its other services after random interactions
TBH, I'd love to find something like the echo dot that just did voice-to-text well and fed that to a (local) server. Every time I've looked into things like Home Assistant as a means of taking over for my Alexa devices, the voice interface is the stumbling block. Sell me that bit of hardware with software for the voice-to-text and let others handle all the features. IFTT (If This Then That) almost bridged that gap, but Amazon dropped support for it last year (https://ifttt.com/explore/amazon-alexa-alternatives).
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Thank you! That's good to know. Link to info for others: https://community.home-assista... [home-assistant.io]
Re: Breakdown of losses by device would be nice (Score:2)
Amazon has to hire engineers, maintain relationships with suppliers, carry inventory, handle customer service, and maintain IT infrastructure to support the device. All that is cost that could be devoted to other initiatives and the decision point is the cost vs return.
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Re: Breakdown of losses by device would be nice (Score:2)
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Okay FP, though I would like to see losses correlated to EVIL. But I think the correlation would be too depressing...
Disclaimer needed: My second and final Amazon purchase was decades ago. I recognized Amazon as an evil corporate cancer before the label existed.
As regards that e-ink Kindle you are so fond of, I would wager that it is tracking your reading speeds and sending that data to Amazon, the better to figure out your real interests and manipulate you more effectively in the future.
Re: Breakdown of losses by device would be nice (Score:2)
None of my Kindles have ever talked to Amazon since they left the factory. Luckily for Amazon, I don't think I'm a typical kindle owner.
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Are you saying that you never downloaded an ebook? That would seem to defeat the purpose of having a Kindle?
Or are you claiming to be smarter than all of Amazon's most diabolical programmers? How would you know exactly what information they have bundled into the communications you doubt exist?
However, I acknowledge that I'm speculating based on some ancient discussions with serious and professional security researchers. I'm long since retired and irrelevant.
Re: Breakdown of losses by device would be nice (Score:2)
Yes, it's very clear you know nothing about Kindles. All my Kindles are in permanent airplane mode, so have no way to talk to Amazon. All my books are added via usb, without using any Amazon software.
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Now you seem to be logically incoherent. It certainly does not matter at all if your Kindle communicates with Amazon via a wired or wireless connection.
Prey tell, how do you think the books get onto your Kindle? It's bad enough if you just tell Amazon everything about your interests, but I suggested something a wee bit worse and it seems to have triggered you in some way. Now you sound rather irrational. I dare say that I even doubt you have even read the entire license agreement to see exactly what sorts o
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Now you seem to be logically incoherent. It certainly does not matter at all if your Kindle communicates with Amazon via a wired or wireless connection.
Now I see another reason why you don't like Kindles - apparently you can't read too well. I do wonder why the person who typed up your post for you didn't help you out a bit more.
As you have poor comprehension skills and know nothing about Kindles, let me try to explain it more simply: my Kindles do not ever connect to Amazon, in any way, at all. This is very simply achieved by turning off the wifi (and for a few models, none of which I own, mobile data), as they have no other way to connect to Amazon. When
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NAK
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Well, they did terminate newspapers for Kindle a couple years ago.
A number would be nice. (Score:2)
Just how much revenue per year did they expect for people to buy through Alexa vs using a keyboard?
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Just how much revenue per year did they expect for people to buy through Alexa vs using a keyboard?
Quite. Why did they think it would increase sales, rather than move sales from website/app to Alexa? It's not exactly difficult to order from Amazon anyway, and did they think lots of people who don't like/use Amazon would buy their device and become converts?
Re: A number would be nice. (Score:2)
Perhaps Amazon figured on more business from parrots [youtu.be].
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It also seems like there's a complete mismatch between how companies want people to use voice assistants and how people actually use them. It's always "turn on the ___ room lights" or "play some music" or "set a timer" or "give me information about ___" and stuff like that. (Usually shouted multiple times until the device picks it up correctly.) I have never heard anyone ask their voice assistant to buy them something
Not to say it doesn't happen, of course. It just doesn't seem like there's a multi-billion
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Voice is a lousy interface for most things, too clunky and frustrating to be worth it.
These smart speakers should have been in a wall-mounted tablet form with a nice touch screen so you could freely mix and match voice with touch and visual feedback.
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Agreed. I've found voice recognitions on phones to be pretty solid, but there are very few things where if I've already got my phone out I'm going to find it more convenient to use the voice assistant. Shouting awkwardly at a cheap SoC in a bespoke plastic shell that's tucked away on a bookshelf in the corner of a room isn't a great user experience.
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Which suggests - Amazon executives grew up with different "parenting" experiences than normal people.
Boy, are they going to struggle to recognise that!
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Too late [newsweek.com]. Already happening [cbsnews.com]. No need for Alexa.
Re: A number would be nice. (Score:2)
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Well, when I was at my son's house, talking about buying a toy firetruck for my grandson, we noticed real firetrucks for sale online. Apparently, Alexa was listening to our conversation about that and actually ordered one, after which my son had to go to his account on his laptop and cancel the order.
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Not to say it doesn't happen, of course. It just doesn't seem like there's a multi-billion dollar revenue stream to tap into here.
I think that what Amazon might be missing is that their customer base only has so much money.
IE They're thinking it's Amazon website + app + alexa = $$$, when instead it's more Amazon purchases (website, app, alexa), where for the most part, an alexa purchase is simply a an order displaced from one of the others.
Plus, there's so much duplication at different price levels with Amazon, that I want to be able to see and comparison shop to get exactly what I want at a good price.
It's one of those "solutions loo
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Because that's what happened every previous time that point of purchase friction was reduced.
The idea itself is sound and well proven at this point. The more friction there is to purchase process, the less sales because people get to think about it and decide against making a purchase. Essentially it's about maximizing impulse buying. Amazon's previous major bet was 1 click purchase. Which is now industry standard because of how wildly successful it was.
In your example, the time it takes to walk to a comput
Re: A number would be nice. (Score:2)
No, the problem is the competition for alexa as shopping experience is the mobile app, not a desktop computer outside the kitchen. And mobile UX is simply a better, less friction, endpoint for sales.
Even a bad mobile UX these days is relatively straightforward and reactive - the customer is in "control" and two clicks/taps away from their dopamine kick, browsing is easy and upsells are expected and not disruptive. Impulse buys are not any more difficult in the kitchen than elsewhere.
But the Alexa shopping e
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Same here, not even one app installed. I suspect we are a minority although. Nowadays, I would say most people which have a smart phone don't even use a desktop computer and are totally unaware of the risks apps pose.
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But the Alexa shopping experience is more limited and full of friction - friction is not just extra steps, but every element that makes you rethink your purchase decision, and every upsell attempt by Alexa reminds you there is a used car salesman sitting in your kitchen.
I can't imagine shopping for anything without a couple of dozen tabs open, comparing specs, prices, etc. To order with Alexa, you'd have to have to know exactly what you wanted, be able to specify that clearly, not want to see it, and not care if you're getting a good deal or not. With Amazon market place sellers, it's not like there is even just one single price for any given item on Amazon. I can see why the latter appeals to Amazon, but are most people really that stupid? Well, apparently the answer is n
Re: A number would be nice. (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the most interesting problems humanity faces today is that people who are above approximately ~110-115 and below ~130-140 IQ genuinely cannot fathom what it's like to be the person on the opposite side of the median. How people between ~65-95 IQ function. I've seen more than one case when in a sports team, a really high IQ guy meets his opposite, and his mind gets utterly blown by just how different, and yet how effective the other guy's thinking patterns are.
Because people on the other side of the median aren't dysfunctional. They function just fine (when not developmentally challenged, which is a different story). But they function very differently. Their base mental model of the world is completely different. The way they navigate problems is completely different. And it's very difficult to predict the outcomes of their modelling of the world when your model is completely different. Essentially their model of the world is not built on ability to quickly grasp and navigate complex abstract models, because they do not have the biological hardware for it. Instead they tend to adopt tactics like diffusion of cognitive tasks, real life testing, and development of much more complex intuition.
The old joke is that IQ distribution maps to roles in society. Far left side of the median instinctually tries to destroy the society because they don't understand that society is what keeps them alive and see it as a tyrant. Left and center builds the society. Right side runs it. And the very edge of right on the IQ distribution actually comprehends how insane society is and intellectually tries to burn it all down because they see it as a tyrant.
This is a case of the right end of the distribution running the society not understanding how people that actually build it navigate the world. Because those people aren't stupid. They just function on a completely different mental model from yours. Where you see it as a good way to spend your time to compare a lot of things, because your mental model is build on your ability to quickly grasp complex abstract concepts. Their mental model is built on not being able to do that efficiently. So they pick whatever looks right, whatever a friend picked, whatever their intuition suggests is the correct one, etc.
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This is an interesting concept that hadn't occurred to me before. Do you have any links to stuff I could read to get more info about the thinking patterns of people on different parts of the IQ scale? Instinctually it makes sense that people would attack a problem differently depending on which skills they have.
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Can't think of any online links, and I would be surprised if this was a subject allowed outside specific academic circles and twitter with its current management due to political correctness mandates.
Much of my body of knowledge on this subject comes from going through usability-related materials for university work back in 2000s. Basically "how to adopt this tool for this group of users" kind of research, which involved a lot of research into thinking patterns, and how to adapt IT tools to those. Everythin
Re: A number would be nice. (Score:2)
But it doesn't reduce friction, except possibly for things like paper towels or other low cost consumables that are extremely unlikely to change brand. For anything more complex or expensive, the purchaser is at least going to want to see the product, the description, and possibly skim the reviews.
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Some idiot thought everyone would be reclining on their chaise-longues and announcing to the room "Alexa, get me some foie gras for tomorrow". Because everybody has or wants concierges, don't they?
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Small world, isn't it? Smaller language.
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I bought one, once. we used it for the things mentioned, but never to buy a product. Why? how could you see the various listings to pick out the one you wanted? Well, there ya go. Oh, and we found it listening when no one had spoken, so, in that moment, unplugged and in the electronics recycling bin.
Ummmm .... (Score:2)
Ummmm ... no ... not crying any rivers, not even a drop.
Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't this always the point?
Two monopolists (Amazon and Google) had way, way too much money. But, they wanted to ensure they kept having way, way too much money, so they invested in "long shots": projects that had a small chance of paying off big time, and a much better chance of not doing so (smart speakers, smart cars, smart chat assistants, etc.).
Now some (most?) of those projects aren't paying off, *exactly as expected* ... and everyone is acting like a surprised Pikachu ... when the whole thing was always meant to be about companies with too much money wasting it.
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"Alexa, what time is it?"
"I will tell you the time shortly, but first listen to this message from our sponsor..."
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And by investing in those expensive, long shot projects, they get to keep the tax money.
Developers Developers Developers (Score:5, Informative)
I think Amazon made the problem much worse by delivering a poor developer experience. I'm an experienced enterprise developer, and I spent a weekend trying to
develop a skill using the Alexa API (I think it was called "Alex"). I wasn't developing a complicated skill - it was nothing more than a "hello world" type of effort. I couldn't get it to work. The documentation was confusing. The support channels were minimal.
3rd-party developers (like me) could have elevated this smart-timer to a multi-skilled market dominator given the right support. There are a lot of cool things developers can build on AWS with a connection to an interactive speech-to-text device - and that may have turned around the fortunes of this overpriced 555 timer.
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Alexa was released too soon. People wanted a Star Trek style computer they could have a natural language conversation with and which crucially could do complex tasks for them. Current "AI" assistants can't come close to that, even with ChatGPT.
So that leaves the speaker function, i.e. music. It's not great for that, mediocre sound quality, and the cheaper ones are mono.
Oh okay, there is the "give more of your money to Amazon" feature, can't believe people weren't sold on that one.
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It is a pretty decent voice activated light switch and timer, though. I definitely miss the convenience when i am staying in a hotel.
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I do building automation stuff. A customer wanted an Echo in each room. I tried integrating it to our system using the home automation skill set. It worked 80% lights on, lights off, turn thermostat up: OK. Turn thermostat down: "I've added chopped potatoes to your shopping list". I also had trouble getting it to trigger on the word "alexa" (I don't have a strong accent). This was for a hotel with international customers. That made me realize that Alexa was not ready for use in hotel rooms.
YMMV
Re:Developers Developers Developers (Score:5, Interesting)
I also tried to develop apps, starting with a vacation rental app that could answer questions for guests, like "What is the WiFi password?", "What is the checkout time?", "Where's the closest grocery store?"
After about a week of trying to get anything to work, I gave up.
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Thank you, I feel less lonely;-)
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I also tried to develop apps, starting with a vacation rental app that could answer questions for guests, like "What is the WiFi password?", "What is the checkout time?", "Where's the closest grocery store?"
After about a week of trying to get anything to work, I gave up.
You've clearly never been friends with a hotelier. Even if you could get it to work perfectly, the end user will still fail to understand and then complain about how your app ruined their perfect holiday by giving them the correct answers they didn't like.
Losing just 1 week of productivity to it, good sir, I dare say you dodged a bullet.
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I think you're being generous. In far too many cases, the documentation was non-existent -- a point I made on more than one occasion when I worked at Lab126.
If you were developing an Alexa "skill," Alexa would hand you the text of what the user had said. From that point forward, you were on your own. "But that means..." Yes, every third-party "skill" was basically Zork. [wikipedia.org]
Home automation integration was little better. In this case, Alexa interpreted the spoken language
Re: Developers Developers Developers (Score:2)
The bubble for Alexa skills and home automation was significant enough, and disconnected enough from any revenue stream for Amazon, I suspect it is not an accident the support for 3rd party app degraded. Their goal was never to become an OS / platform for 3rd party businesses, and they did not setup the incentives to make that profitable for alexa.
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It didn't used to be that way - when they first came out, it was only a little confusing, but I was able, without too much trouble, to write apps that interfaced to both my weather station and my solar panels. A couple of years ago, I went back to try another and yeah, gave up on that. At least my existing apps stayed working...
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I think the other issue is that Amazon tried to cripple the devices either for simplicity or to create opportunities for devs.
For instance, adding conditionals to routines has a ton of obvious use cases but amazon refuses to add it. As a result a ton of fairly basic home automation opportunities aren't there.
Underware Gnomes (Score:2)
Looks like Amazon is stuck on:
Phase 2
?
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Amazon is giving up too easily . . . (Score:2)
Give she who must not be named a skill to channel Chatbot or one of the other AI's. When I first got mine (at my wife's behest, BTW) I spent a great deal of time actively trying to engage in dialogue. Sure, some of it was the amusement that came when I asked her to open the pod bay doors - a joke that no longer works with her - but a lot of it was curiosity how far this vaguely chatty little thing could get on a Turing test.
If people are using chatbots as S/O's, therapists, authors, etc. - how logical wo
Here's what I think they'll do now: (Score:2)
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I'm astonished. Actually, incredulous. If you tell me it ain't so, I won't believe you until you've proved it in nit-picking detail.
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I admit that my choice of plan 'C' was motivated by seeing no use for the object at all (I do not struggle to set alarms on my computer, or my phone), rather than the principled position of buying one to damage Amazon's bottom line, then throwing it into the bin.
If only someone had marketed a 1$ PROM that would turn one into a (Beowulfable) compute node, so that millions of us could have had a living room supercomputer at Bezos' expense. But I d
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Re: Here's what I think they'll do now: (Score:2)
I thought Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are your enemy? Sounds like you make your own enemies in that fourth-world shithole you live in?
Hidden revenue opportunity (Score:1)
Amazon is just one TOS update away from unleashing a giant source of revenue - recording all conversations in range 24x7 and selling them for AI training.
Or maybe the existing TOS allows for this, I never did get one myself.
I cancelled Amazon Prime (Score:4, Interesting)
I can see why they are losing money.
After their latest price increases for Prime (including Prime video, Alexa music, etc.) I cancelled Prime.
Since then I've not missed either "service" and I've discovered that I can get everything I used to buy on Amazon for much less on eBay, etc. with free shipping, returns, etc.
You did what?! (Score:2, Interesting)
How did you manage to hire 10K people for that trash?
Its at best a 100 person product.
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Really? (Score:1)
"We worried we've hired 10,000 people and we've built a smart timer," said a former senior employee.
Yeah well your headcount outnumbers authors making decent money ten to one. Good job.
/vigorous thumbs-up sign
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the core problem. 10,000 people and what did they create? This is a management failure. 10,000 people should have created many more products and much better ones. That fact that they didn't is a colossal management failure. With 10,000 people they should have owned most of the consumer electronics market.
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That fact that they didn't is a colossal management failure
Management is never at fault. It must have been those lazy workers being programmed by George Soros to be ineffective. Vote for ZZyzylbiz to fix this issue.
So what? (Score:3)
You're literally permanently in everyone's living room and home. There's so many ways to capitalize on that it boggles the mind.
Here's a random selection of ways to make money off the cheap speakers:
- Make your own streaming radio/podcast service that plays your own ads
- Determine the user's preferences and alert them when discounted products are available
- Charge a small fee for new features (really just other apps' features that you'll recreate and sell) like reminders, note taking, warnings (weather, amber alert, etc), notifications (from your phone, from social media, from email, etc)
- Offer discounts (free Prime?) if users are willing to listen to ads
- Release a new version with a battery so people can take it camping, to a soccer game, etc, then bundle more features for those outdoor settings
- Enable pairing with other speakers so you can have your friends bring theirs and you can have big sound at a party/gathering
- Enable pairing with TV/etc for more surround sound
- Enable pairing so you can be on a Zoom call on your computer and then move to another room and the speaker continues to relay the call sound/mic
There's like a million ideas you could come up with. The product is literally already in their homes. Just start enabling use cases.
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Their PMs don't live in the real world (Score:5, Insightful)
"Let's just roll this out because it sounds neat and will sell and then...um...???" - exactly something Amazon management would say.
Can't wait to see their upcoming projects. Probably wearable glasses with a camera that will be banned everywhere and a VR headset that gives people headache after 30 minutes that nobody asked for. Wait, Google and Facebook already did that.
Importance of Good User Interface and Experience (Score:3)
The user experience really matters. With Amazon carrying so many products, voice isn't fit for purpose for ordering because there are so many similar product listings without a convenient way to know that you are buying the correct product and to quickly assess reviews.
Similarly the experience on Fire devices is no better than just using the app on an iOS or Google Android phone.
The problem isn't the device model, the problem is misdirected effort.
XKCD... (Score:4, Insightful)
TechGiants are useless (Score:2)
I wonder - who snagged WorldsTiniestViolin.com, and what do they do with it.
Nothing coming up on DDG ... and I'm even more disappointed that the holder of https://interestingengineering [interestin...eering.com]
Arguably Notional Losses (Score:3)
On this issue, I'm willing to give Amazon a couple of points here, because the temptation is to give yourself a massive discount, since you're just moving the money from one pocket to another. Though it would fall afoul of anti-trust laws, enforcement of said laws has until very recently been lax. Even so, Amazon chose not to do that.
Disclaimer: I'm a former employee of Amazon Lab126.
Re: Arguably Notional Losses (Score:2)
Using AWS doesn't become a good idea just because you're Amazon. It's easily one of the most overpriced, vendor locked platforms. Using it at scale is likely to soon most products.
Re: Arguably Notional Losses (Score:3)
That "soon" was auto-corrected from "doom".
I fucking hate phone keyboards. They are all trash software built by trash people.
Alexa needed 10k people to develop it? (Score:5, Interesting)
What in the everliving hell would 10k people do for the Alexa platform? That's the number of people I might expect for an operating system, not a bloated Google voice search.
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Managers are busy managing. Creating is the team's job. The manager was clearly VERY effective as they built a team of over 10,000 people. Stop blaming the management. It is the regular employees fault that they couldn't do anything with a 10k member team.
Because we don't trust you (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course people aren't just ordering everything through Alexa. Their business model was absolutely shit for consumers from the get go. We aren't as dumb as they hoped. We all knew, that all this would be is a way to obfuscate what we are actually ordering and giving control of the brand and quality to Amazon.
What they wanted, is instead of us going to find the product we want, at the price we think is good, and the quality / brand we want, they want us to blindly order 'Hot chocolate' and allow Amazon to pick the product which makes them the most profit, regardless of the quality and cost of the item we want.
Sorry Amazon, most people aren't that stupid to hand over trust like that to a company who clearly, like every company, doesn't have the consumers best interest in mind. The only one that does is the consumers, and consumers via the government when we push our politicians for regulations as they want to get elected again.
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No words to add, just +6 Insightful kind sir. You nailed it. Perfectly.
Classic Underpants Gnone (Score:2)
Phase 2: ??
Phase 3: Profit!!
No Funny yet (Score:2)
but the story has potential...
Re: No Funny yet (Score:2)
Break Up Amazon (Score:2)
Three problems (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two big problems with Alexa devices.
First, they aren't that "smart." They fell way behind Google Assistant in terms of ability to answer questions.
Second, they were too focused on selling stuff. "No Alexa, I don't want you to order new ink cartridges today."
Third, people don't trust Amazon to purchase things without first looking at reviews, the seller rating, and the price. When you reorder something, even from the same seller, the price jumps all over the place. One time, that low price you got is great, the next time, some other seller has the same item for half the price. Amazon won't steer you to the cheaper seller, they'll happily charge you the higher price.
So no, sorry, I don't want to buy things using Alexa. It's too risky. Amazon has not made itself trustworthy enough to just tell the assistant to order something for you.
Begging NSA (Score:2)
They just want subsidies for their spyware products.
How many of those 10K are handling police state requests?
Brand awareness (Score:2)
I use it for Audible and streaming radio (Score:2)
I only use my Echo Dot to listen to my Audible audio books and streaming radio stations. That's it. There's no way I'm gonna buy stuff via voice only where I can't view pictures and read reviews of products and compare them to other products. That's just laughable.
Alexa Skills Are Terrible (Score:2)
Amazon's hardware has been pretty hit and miss for me. The Kindle Paperwhite line is good (though managing your content is a hassle), the Fire tablets were okay as not-too-expensive devices for controlling kids' access to content, and the Fire sticks are not terrible, but the smart speakers just leave so much to be desired.
I have a few standalone Amazon devices (Show, Echo), and one of the most glaring problems is how the Alexa "skills" don't always work correctly. Take for example "OU Insult Clock." It's a
Still no Funny? (Score:2)
Sadness.