Amazon Alexa Is a 'Colossal Failure,' On Pace To Lose $10 Billion This Year (arstechnica.com) 159
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon is going through the biggest layoffs in the company's history right now, with a plan to eliminate some 10,000 jobs. One of the areas hit hardest is the Amazon Alexa voice assistant unit, which is apparently falling out of favor at the e-commerce giant. That's according to a report from Business Insider, which details "the swift downfall of the voice assistant and Amazon's larger hardware division." Alexa has been around for 10 years and has been a trailblazing voice assistant that was copied quite a bit by Google and Apple. Alexa never managed to create an ongoing revenue stream, though, so Alexa doesn't really make any money. The Alexa division is part of the "Worldwide Digital" group along with Amazon Prime video, and Business Insider says that division lost $3 billion in just the first quarter of 2022, with "the vast majority" of the losses blamed on Alexa. That is apparently double the losses of any other division, and the report says the hardware team is on pace to lose $10 billion this year. It sounds like Amazon is tired of burning through all that cash.
The BI report spoke with "a dozen current and former employees on the company's hardware team," who described "a division in crisis." Just about every plan to monetize Alexa has failed, with one former employee calling Alexa "a colossal failure of imagination," and "a wasted opportunity." This month's layoffs are the end result of years of trying to turn things around. Alexa was given a huge runway at the company, back when it was reportedly the "pet project" of former CEO Jeff Bezos. An all-hands crisis meeting took place in 2019 to try to turn the monetization problem around, but that was fruitless. By late 2019, Alexa saw a hiring freeze, and Bezos started to lose interest in the project around 2020. Of course, Amazon now has an entirely new CEO, Andy Jassy, who apparently isn't as interested in protecting Alexa. The report says that while Alexa's Echo line is among the "best-selling items on Amazon, most of the devices sold at cost." One internal document described the business model by saying, "We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices."
That plan never really materialized, though. It's not like Alexa plays ad breaks after you use it, so the hope was that people would buy things on Amazon via their voice. Not many people want to trust an AI with spending their money or buying an item without seeing a picture or reading reviews. The report says that by year four of the Alexa experiment, "Alexa was getting a billion interactions a week, but most of those conversations were trivial commands to play music or ask about the weather." Those questions aren't monetizable. Amazon also tried to partner with companies for Alexa skills, so a voice command could buy a Domino's pizza or call an Uber, and Amazon could get a kickback. The report says: "By 2020, the team stopped posting sales targets because of the lack of use." The team also tried to paint Alexa as a halo product with users who are more likely to spend at Amazon, even if they aren't shopping by voice, but studies of that theory found that the "financial contribution" of those users "often fell short of expectations."
In a public note to employees, Jassy said the company still has "conviction in pursuing" Alexa, but that's after making huge cuts to the Alexa team. One employee told Business Insider that currently, "There's no clear directive for devices" in the future, and that since the hardware isn't profitable, there's no clear incentive to keep iterating on popular products. That lack of direction led to the internally controversial $1,000 Astro robot, which is basically an Amazon Alexa on wheels. Business Insider's tracking now puts Alexa in third place in the US voice-assistant wars, with the Google Assistant at 81.5 million users, Apple's Siri at 77.6 million, and Alexa at 71.6 million.
The BI report spoke with "a dozen current and former employees on the company's hardware team," who described "a division in crisis." Just about every plan to monetize Alexa has failed, with one former employee calling Alexa "a colossal failure of imagination," and "a wasted opportunity." This month's layoffs are the end result of years of trying to turn things around. Alexa was given a huge runway at the company, back when it was reportedly the "pet project" of former CEO Jeff Bezos. An all-hands crisis meeting took place in 2019 to try to turn the monetization problem around, but that was fruitless. By late 2019, Alexa saw a hiring freeze, and Bezos started to lose interest in the project around 2020. Of course, Amazon now has an entirely new CEO, Andy Jassy, who apparently isn't as interested in protecting Alexa. The report says that while Alexa's Echo line is among the "best-selling items on Amazon, most of the devices sold at cost." One internal document described the business model by saying, "We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices."
That plan never really materialized, though. It's not like Alexa plays ad breaks after you use it, so the hope was that people would buy things on Amazon via their voice. Not many people want to trust an AI with spending their money or buying an item without seeing a picture or reading reviews. The report says that by year four of the Alexa experiment, "Alexa was getting a billion interactions a week, but most of those conversations were trivial commands to play music or ask about the weather." Those questions aren't monetizable. Amazon also tried to partner with companies for Alexa skills, so a voice command could buy a Domino's pizza or call an Uber, and Amazon could get a kickback. The report says: "By 2020, the team stopped posting sales targets because of the lack of use." The team also tried to paint Alexa as a halo product with users who are more likely to spend at Amazon, even if they aren't shopping by voice, but studies of that theory found that the "financial contribution" of those users "often fell short of expectations."
In a public note to employees, Jassy said the company still has "conviction in pursuing" Alexa, but that's after making huge cuts to the Alexa team. One employee told Business Insider that currently, "There's no clear directive for devices" in the future, and that since the hardware isn't profitable, there's no clear incentive to keep iterating on popular products. That lack of direction led to the internally controversial $1,000 Astro robot, which is basically an Amazon Alexa on wheels. Business Insider's tracking now puts Alexa in third place in the US voice-assistant wars, with the Google Assistant at 81.5 million users, Apple's Siri at 77.6 million, and Alexa at 71.6 million.
Always wondered how that was doing (Score:2)
I always thought these Alexa style devices made little sense in a world where Google and Apple users could all ask phones or watches for the same info an Alexa could give.
I guess in the end they do serve as passible speakers, I have a few friends who own Alexa devices and that's mostly what they end up getting used for.
But that is a huge disconnect between development efforts and what the devices are actually used for, it seems like you could cut back everyone who was not involved in making Alexa devices be
Re:Always wondered how that was doing (Score:4, Insightful)
Google/Apple competition don't seem to be the problem, Alexa devices sell well apparently. But they just can't monetize it because nobody's going to let a talking box spend $$$ with no oversight.
Re:Always wondered how that was doing (Score:5, Funny)
You're telling me this [xkcd.com] doesn't work?
Re:Always wondered how that was doing (Score:5, Insightful)
The oversight is the problem. If Amazon's people used their own site, they would understand the amount of interaction and general mental effort required just to reorder something purchased dozens of times before. Is it in stock? Is it coming direct from Amazon fulfulfillment? If not, what vendor is it coming from this time? When will I get it? Etc.
And God help you if you need to fall back to Amazon's search engine to find an alternate product or vendor.
I expect secretaries to start coming back into style any day now, because of how painful it is to do business with major Internet retailers and service providers these days.
Re:Always wondered how that was doing (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's almost impressive just how BAD Amazon search is. I mean, come on - I can search for ONE word and over 90% of the results don't include it? What is the point of even having a search engine that useless? God help you if you're searching for something specific, or even just with certain specs. Actually - I doubt even She can help with that mess.
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Re:Always wondered how that was doing (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's almost impressive just how BAD Amazon search is. I mean, come on - I can search for ONE word and over 90% of the results don't include it? What is the point of even having a search engine that useless?
This.
At this point, I almost always use Google to search Amazon, with "site:amazon.com". But Amazon even manages to screw that up by serving piles of ads in their contents (people who bought this might like [x]), and those ads often contain the keywords I'm looking for, which makes search challenging even with Google. And I'd be willing to bet that's why their internal search system is worthless as well.
Folks, don't include advertisements in contents sent to search engines. Just don't.
If somebody even halfway competent wanted to wipe Amazon off the map, it wouldn't even be hard to do a better job of literally everything they do. The only thing they have going for them at this point is momentum, and that only works for so long.
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No, amazon isn't just a website, it's a massive national distribution network that allows them to deliver goods faster and more efficiently than all but a very few other direct competitors, namely walmart and, uh...
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At this point, I almost always use Google to search Amazon, with "site:amazon.com". But Amazon even manages to screw that up by serving piles of ads in their contents (people who bought this might like [x]), and those ads often contain the keywords I'm looking for, which makes search challenging even with Google.
It's not "screwed up", it's by design. Those ads are their source of income.
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people who bought this might like [x]
And that's another Amazon gem, "We noticed you bought a funeral wreath for your mother, here are twenty other funeral wreaths that you might like". FFS mark anything that's a one-off purchase as such and don't spam me with offers to try and sell ten more of them.
Re: Always wondered how that was doing (Score:2)
Indeed!
But I don't mind the ads saying: people also bought this. Or: people often buy this as well. Sometimes that helps me.
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Monetize. It costs money. Must be addressed, or... (Score:3)
It would be trivial to monetize the general (and by far the most common) uses of Alexa.
Add sufficient X$ to the yearly prime account charge to cover interactions plus a profit, and only serve interactions to users with Prime.
This would certainly cause an uproar, but it would stop Amazon from bleeding money with every echo device sold and every network/cloud interaction. They're not losing money on actual device sales. They're not selling them at a per-device loss. They just aren't making money on per-device
Re:Always wondered how that was doing (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely - if you've ever tried to (re)buy something as trivial as some batteries with an Alexa, you'll know it's a painful experience.
Also, whilst it might be good for Amazon, very few people just blindly rebuy the exact same item without checking if it's available cheaper from someone else. Thus, even buying the AA batteries example, you'll buy the cheapest set of Duracell batteries, but you perhaps won't buy Amazon Basics, even if they're cheaper. The Duracell batteries are sold my everyone and their cat, so different vendors sometimes are cheaper if you buy a bigger pack or whatever.
How on earth you're supposed to navigate all of that by voice I'll never know.
"Alexa, order AA batteries"
"Okay, which AA batteries do you want?"
"Alexa, Duracell"
"I think you meant Energizer, okay, I've found four AA batteries for $10"
"Alexa, Duracell AA batteries"
"Okay, I've found four Duracell AA batteries for $10"
"Alexa, are there any cheaper options?"
"I've found 2 AA batteries for $5"
"Alexa, are there any bigger packs with a lower per-battery price?"
"I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean"
(etc)
Either make Amazon much simpler (ie. just one option for each product), or else Alexa isn't going to work for shopping. It sounds like they've gone for the latter.
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Google/Apple competition don't seem to be the problem, Alexa devices sell well apparently. But they just can't monetize it because nobody's going to let a talking box spend $$$ with no oversight.
You build a device, then you set a price and sell it. The cheaper, the easier to sell. If you make it so cheap that you have a loss with every sale, then you will sell a loss. It's very easy to sell a lot of Alexas when you are willing to eat 3 billion dollars of loss or close to that every year.
Don't know much about what Google is doing, but I'm quite sure that when you buy a HomePod Apple is going to make some money.
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I always thought these Alexa style devices made little sense in a world where Google and Apple users could all ask phones or watches for the same info an Alexa could give.
I guess in the end they do serve as passible speakers...
Uh, speaker? That's certainly an interesting way of describing a voice triggering premium microphone array installed in tens of millions of homes.
And here I was wondering if Amazon was going to quietly call Alexa "bankrupt" in favor of selling off that Government-friendly next-gen mass surveillance system that's conveniently already installed, on behalf of fighting [insert domestic 'terror' distraction of the week here].
Search engine? Oh yeah, they'll keep that voice-recognition collection service alive.
Re: Always wondered how that was doing (Score:2, Insightful)
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Lighting (Score:2)
This. I live in a large space — I built an interior into an old church — and managing the lighting manually involves constant long walks over multiple floor levels. With voice control, it's easy, convenient, and I really am not worried about Amazon collating my lighting control data, either. Or my interest in the weather. Or my taste in music, for that matter.* Which pretty much covers 99% of e
Outstanding! (Score:2)
It does my heart good to see those high-tech snitches being killed. Now if only Amazon could also lose its shirt on those abominable Ring devices.
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Law enforcement loves Ring too much to let it die.
Re: Outstanding! (Score:2)
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The problems with "Ring" in particular is 1) it gives a sense of constant observation on Amazon delivery people https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org] 2) it gives ever increasing power to a single big player -- I'd rather go for a small brand that just has few cameras here and there and cannot gather too much of data about me/my neighbours.
Affordable home cameras/doorbells camera are in local shops for a lot of time. This is the first link I got when I ask for home camera review https://www.cnet.com/home/secu... [cnet.com]
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So you're saying that audio/video doorbells and personal home surveillance are things only rich people should have access to? Because nobody cared about them until "the poors" were able to have such things.
I never said that, and didn't even imply it. Also, that sentiment was nowhere in my mind - even at the back of it - when I wrote the comment. I'm simply against pervasive surveillance, especially that which mines privacy invasion in the name of both profit and civil rights violations - and my posting history demonstrates that. So kindly stop misinterpreting my words to suit your fantasies.
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Though to me this does suggest that Amazon's gathered data by consensual eavesdropping via Alexa hasn't been worth it after all.
Well, at least in the Western World, because they weren't able to sell the audio data to someone paranoid enough to be willing to pay large sums for every little bit, like authoritarian governments.
Ring's spy video feed could be more valuable as a visual recording contains a lot more data that's potentially useful. I suppose we have to find out.
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Now if only Amazon could also lose its shirt on those abominable Ring devices.
Tell me you're privileged enough to live in a nice neighborhood without telling me you're privileged enough to live in a nice neighborhood.
This word you keep using: privileged
I do not think it means what you seem to think it means.
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Well, it could be he's anti-Ring because he's a package thief from whose POV you're the privileged one.
Spooning (Score:2)
Most of us are born into being beaten about the finances and sensibilities with someone else's silver spoon. And that won't change for very many of us, either. Because that's the design intent of the system.
Re: Outstanding! (Score:2)
Recognizing the serious issues with Ring does not imply a stance in opposition to all home security systems.
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There's a difference between just affordable home surveillance and affordable home surveillance that can all be accessed by a single large entity that has wide reaching influence.
If some government agency was behind this, the red flags would probably go up rather quickly. But if a corporation does it, it's all fine. Because what could possibly go wrong, right?
How is Alexa losing $10 billion? (Score:5, Interesting)
How is Alexa losing $10 billion this year? There's no way it costs that much to run. Is Amazon sending $10 to everyone who says "Alexa, send me $10"?
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"OK Google. How much does it cost to use Alexa?"
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And yet the standalone OSS alternatives cost about the same up front, have zero ongoing costs, and actually respect your privacy.
If Amazon is losing money on Alexa, I can only assume it's because the "fuck over the users" division is far too large and yet still can't figure out how to make their fuckery turn a profit.
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Well, today I asked Alexa how many calories are in an average cow, and it came back with 1.5M usable calories, and some additional errata.
This was because I was wondering how many cows worth of food the average person consumes in a lifetime, and how I might ask somebody if they think they're really worth X number of cows.
What's the open source alternative for this use case?
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Any text-to-speach frontend feeding queries to Google, Wolfram, etc.
Good question. Answer: Mycroft. (Score:2)
Mycroft. [mycroft.ai]
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What is this "standardized OSS alternative" that will keep a datacenter running and processing your questions for free, forever?
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Re:How is Alexa losing $10 billion? (Score:5, Funny)
I hope it works better than my digital assistant.
"Elon, send $12 billion in unmarked bearer bonds to my Cayman account."
"OK. I've sent 12 rabid bears to fuck up your Porsche in the parking lot."
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I hope it works better than my digital assistant.
"Elon, send $12 billion in unmarked bearer bonds to my Cayman account."
"OK. I've sent 12 rabid bears to fuck up your Porsche in the parking lot."
Hmm... A snafu like that could explain how Musk ended up buying Twitter.
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Might be it costs more to manufacture the things than they charge retail. But that would mean they're moving tons of the things and/or they have warehouses full of unsold units.
Alexa doesn't do anything so amazing that support services would cost that much. Something is very wrong with that division.
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My thoughts as well, I can see some significant development costs but at this point I would think that the voice recognition software itself is coded and the hardware to facilitate it commercially is already purchased and running. My only guess is that that $10 billion number includes marketing (they mentioned some consumer devices being sold at cost) and product development for new applications but even then it seems like an obscene amount of money to be spending for a single service.
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These companies want to control as much of the surveillance apparatus as they can. The amounts spent tell you how big of a priority it is.
If advertising revenues continue to fall, surveillance is going to become the reason these companies exist. Their revenue stream will start looking more like LexisNexis'. Once that happens, they are no longer an advertising company. They will be administering the US' privatized social credit system.
And at that point, they're "too big to fail". They'll become just as entre
Re: How is Alexa losing $10 billion? (Score:2)
Dang I was going to ask the same thing. I just don't see how to lose that much. Say that there at 100 million Alexa units sold worldwide (optimistically). A $10 billion annual loss means that every single unit is costing them $100 per year. That's nuts. I can buy a unit for $20-50, so the unit is already losing money after only a few months. Say that a typical user interacts with Alexa 5 times per day (again, optimistically) or 1800 times per year. That means every interaction is costing them 5.5 cents. If
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As well as the infrastructure costs and the R&D, they have to support developers who build Alexa apps (so you can ask Alexa for stuff that is handled outside of Amazon), and they are probably subsidising the hardware too.
Subscription Model (Score:3)
"Alexa was getting a billion interactions a week, but most of those conversations were trivial commands to play music or ask about the weather." Those questions aren't monetizable.
I'm surprised there is no mention of trying to sell a subscription. Individual trivial questions may not be monetizable, but perhaps people would pay a small fee to ask unlimited trivial questions per month.
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Neat device, odd business model (Score:2)
..the hope was that people would buy things on Amazon via their voice.
Well, you know the saying: "Wish in one hand, crap in the other, and see which fills up first."
I bought Echo Dots for controlling my smart lighting. That and setting cooking timers in the kitchen is about all they're good for. For any other task, it's simply more intuitive to get out my phone and use something with a screen. That's the crux of the issue; it's really hard to beat the convenience of a device you already have in your pocket.
I always figured the point of selling these things as a loss leade
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Totally agree - what you say, plus listening to music (I have one that connects to my amp). Given the cost though, that's enough for me to have a couple.
I mean, I can't imagine bothering with smart lights if I didn't have voice control (and I find Google to have some pretty big flaws which makes it inferior, not least of which is that its much slower to respond)
Alex can't answer nontrivial questions (Score:5, Funny)
most of those conversations were trivial commands to play music or ask about the weather
Me: Alexa, when is the next time August 31st will fall on a Saturday?
Alexa: Thursday!
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"Alexa, how many calories are there in an average cow"
Mentioned it elsewhere here... surprised it came back with a good answer.
I don't talk to robots (Score:3)
When robots get so good that they are better than people, I will start talking to them
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Given the choice between speaking to a tech/customer support who has English as a second language or a machine that speaks very clearly I am overjoyed to hear the machine for at least basic interactions.
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When robots get so good that they are better than people, I will start talking to them
Whelp, that explains women talking to their vibrators ...
Favourite uses of Alexa in my home (Score:3)
I really can't see how they're not making money out of this:
"Alexa, play Encanto"
"Alexa, turn it up"
"Alexa, turn it down"
"Alexa, play poopy bum fart pee butt crack"
"Alexa, play fart noises"
"Alexa, play my sister is a butt face and smells like a fart and I'm gonna punch her in the butt crack"
"Alexa, OFF"
Wait, Wait, Wait... (Score:2)
If someone sold that idea to management, I want to meet that person because that is awesome.
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The concept was the people will make more frequent and stupider purchases if they're using voice and thus can't scroll through a results page to compare prices or check if it's more than they paid last time.
Turns out people are aware of that and don't actually like wasting money.
Science fictiony future might take time (Score:2)
Computer!
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Dominos Pizza Order doesn't exist (Score:2, Informative)
The use case to say "Alexa order my favorite pizza from Dominos" or "Alexa order me a Big Mac from McDonalds on Uber Eats" - is very solid and something I have wanted to work with Alexa or Google Asisstant for years now - but it is not implemented!!! Of course something that doesn't exist can't be monetized.
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The use case to say "Alexa order my favorite pizza from Dominos" or "Alexa order me a Big Mac from McDonalds on Uber Eats" - is very solid and something I have wanted to work with Alexa or Google Asisstant for years now - but it is not implemented!!!
It's all fun and games until someone else in your household edits your favorite pizza to include pineapple.
Re:Dominos Pizza Order doesn't exist (Score:5, Funny)
"edits" the order?
I think you mean "upgrades" the order.
Re: Dominos Pizza Order doesn't exist (Score:2)
I know you were joking - but Alexa has voice match so that wouldn't even work.
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I believed it used to. It also had pizza hut and papa johns but nobody was using them so they pulled the skills years ago. The problem was, nobody knew...and was limited to saved orders.
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The problem is that the *vast* majority of people don't have a "favourite pizza", they *literally* have to look at the menu every time to decide what to have.
I think this is an autistic geek problem - "I know what I like, why would I have anything else" compared
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The problem is that the *vast* majority of people don't have a "favourite pizza", they *literally* have to look at the menu every time to decide what to have.
People like me who have to look at the menu every time to decide, and always end up with the same pizza :-)
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In order to have that kind of convenience first you have to set up Alexa and your Dominos account in such a way that this sequence of words results in a pizza you have designated your favourite to be automatically charged to your recent card and delivered to your registered address. The trouble is just about anything at all is "convenient" if you front load all the effort like that. By the same logic you could have a button on the home screen of your phone that does all that and doesn't even require you to
Focused too sharply on making money (Score:2)
Unlike Siri and Google Assistant, Alexa has been too focused on immediately making money. It always wants to sell you something or play a commercial. This annoys potential users to the point that they don't want to use Alexa any more.
Google Assistant and Siri, by contrast, focus on being useful. This makes people want to use them for all kinds of things, some of which bring in revenue.
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...Alexa has been too focused on immediately making money.
Wait, was there someone somewhere who thought Alexa was supposed to serve some other purpose? I am now majorly confused.
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It's not confusing at all.
Every business is in existence to make money. But they have two competing priorities: 1) Make money and 2) Make customers happy. If #1 is the only priority, customers will not be happy, and the business will soon disappear. If #2 is the only priority, they won't make money, and the business will soon disappear. So every business has to decide where on the spectrum they want to be: more focused on making money, or more focused on making customers happy.
Another way of looking at it i
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Yes, but you make it sound like it is a single axis. Really it is more like two axes, so you can have:
* Customers happy, Company making money.
* Customers unhappy, Company losing money.
* Customers happy, Company losing money.
* Customers unhappy, Company making money. Really only works with a captive market and usually not for long.
I love my Alexa but Amazon makes nothing (Score:2)
The lack of support by management shows (Score:3)
After all this time, Alexa is still dumb as a rock and it seems to have gotten worse. No manual, no known fixed feature set you can rely on, but you pay them for... access? Web articles that show "25 things Alexa knows how to do will amaze you" is not user support. Alexa devices are like a keyboard with blank keys, and every time you have to figure out what the keys do today. New function? No function? Who knows. Amazon seems to think you should be grateful it knows how to do what it does.
After 40 years, conversational AI should work reasonably well.
Siri is just as bad, but in different ways.
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I'm not disagreeing with you - what you say is true. Its not smart at all. But it works. At least for the few things I use my echos for (timers, lights and music) I find that it works and it works fast.
Google on the other hand is much smarter, but it is painfully slow. I often think it hasn't heard me because the response takes so long. And when things don't work there is generally no work around, like there is with Alexa skills (try playing non-UK based internet radio if you're in the UK. Its blocked by T
Reminds me of Star Trek (Score:3)
Think back to TNG and how many times was the onboard computer asked to provide some type of useful information. Not when it came to engineering, but on the whole, how many times did we see every other character on the show use the computer for anything other than basic interaction?
"Computer. Where is Mr. Data?"
"Computer. How far is it to Starbase 029?"
Picard's interaction is the most obvious (Tea. Earl Gray. Hot.), but that is something pre-programmed. How would Amazon monetize that? "Would you like to try other tea? People who like Earl Gray also like. . . "
At best, someone might ask for a recipe or what the weather will be like tomorrow or a few days out. Or, as the article relates, play a song. That's why Bezos lost interest. He realized it had nowhere to go.
Alexa isn't a bad idea on the whole (I will never have one), it's the implementation and need to monetize everything someone does that is it's failure.
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I suggest you watch the episodes "Remember Me" and "Darmok" for a more expansive sense of how they use the Enterprise's computer. :)
Literally only use it for music and weather (Score:2)
And I hate the device because whenever I ask about the weather, it won't stfu. But it's still quicker to ask than to open an app.
I only bought it for music voice commands. However, even Amazon's Music service is starting to nag me about enabling extra bluetooth features or about purchasing a family plan... And it asks me every time I open the app. Why am I dismissing the same 2 popups every time I want to listen to the premium service that I'm already paying for? I've already opted out of everything and I s
just an accounting trick (Score:4, Insightful)
first of all, it is interesting the article came out just before black friday by, according to his profile, an author who is into google devices. It makes me wonder how bias he is.
I believe that 10 billion is just an accounting trick. No way they could lose 10 billion with all the ads, data they collect, devices, licensing deals, and more. Could be a way to start requiring a subscription.
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Seems you haven't read even what was posted. Alexa doesn't run ads, the devices are sold at cost and Amazon can't really get licensing deals. That was up there in the text.
So basically there's no revenue, yet Amazon still spends money on hardware and software design.
Does this reach $10B? It could be that there's clever accounting here. But what's obvious is that this unit is bleeding money, and that's not an accounting trick.
And what about the others? (Score:5, Interesting)
So it says Alexa is in 3rd place, but are the other two making any money?
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You could RTFA of course, which says that Google is having the same exact problem :)
Apple might be charging enough on the devices themselves to keep from losing money though.
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Data point (Score:2)
My echo has generated significant sales of Amazon branded smart-home light switches, and I buy more stuff on Amazon due to the "add to my shopping|wish list" functionality.
My only complaint with the kit is I'd like it to "learn". I've asked her to tell the roomba to stop hundreds of times. In all of those interactions, not once have I answered yes to the follow-up question about returning the Roomba to the dock. It would be nice if she could understand that and make the assumption in the future.
Re: (Score:2)
My only complaint with the kit is I'd like it to "learn". I've asked her to tell the Roomba to stop hundreds of times. In all of those interactions, not once have I answered yes to the follow-up question about returning the Roomba to the dock. It would be nice if she could understand that and make the assumption in the future.
Careful what you ask for. One of these days it's going to ask, "Would you like to *not* return the Roomba to the dock?", you'll say "No" and off it will go. Learned it will have. :-)
Would you pay a subscription for Google search? (Score:2)
I'm thinking not, right? This is Amazon's dilemma with Alexa, IMO. It's actually a pretty nice system. Since I was already "all in" with Apple Macs and devices around our house, I started out trying to use Siri and HomeKit to automate everything. It was a pretty abysmal failure. HomeKit constantly had sync issues, especially when my wife decided to use it too. (It lets you grant access to another family member, but her iPhone would randomly lose half of the devices showing on mine. You never knew when the g
Just as well. (Score:2)
I've never had, and won't ever have, an Alexa (or similar) device -- and have only met one person who has, or had, one.
She got annoyed with her new device because whenever she called her daughter Alexa she heard, "I'm having trouble connecting to the Internet." I don't know if she stopped using it or simply changed the wake word, but know she didn't have any children named "Ziggy,” “Echo,” “Amazon,” or “Computer” -- yet.
it's not all bad (Score:2)
My Favorite Alexa Experience (Score:2)
I have a handful of them starting with the OG Echo which still works like a charm as far as it works the same as day one.
The Show model I have in the kitchen give hints "Ask Alexa ..." One time it was "Ask Alexa where are nearby grocery stores. Being in dense suburbs, I was curious. I asked. It gave me a list of 3 items, two were your convenience 7 eleven type store and a Quickaroo. Meanwhile I have 4 well known grocery stores within 3 miles of me including ... wait for it ... Whole Foods! They cast bait, I
Re: (Score:2)
Everything in your "good for" list I feel it's only good for because we made phones really bad for it. Apple popularised buttonless slabs of touchscreens then focus tested app developers reduced the interactable elements to a couple of buttons and a burger menu. And because ostensibly we keep our lives on our phones we had to put secure pin entries which makes interacting with them take too long. And to fix that we have fingerprint readers that never seem to work right or face detection that never seems to
Alexa is a Colossal Write Off.... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand (Score:2)
But as for how it makes (some) money I would suggest streaming music, radio, podcasts, fitness classes, concierge service, foreign language courses, cookery
Re: (Score:2)
Amazon needs a full ecosystem (Score:2)
Google and Apple have full stack ecosystems, Apple makes money off app store and high margins. Google has app store, search and targeted advertising.
Any non ecosystem consumer electronics has to be far better than first party in-ecosystem competition, which are better advertised, better integrated, are developed in lock step with the rest of the ecosystem and really are halo devices for profitable services.
Giving up on competing entirely is dangerous, because more and more consumer electronics is moving fir
Never had Alexa devices, NEVER will ! (Score:2)
Alexa Skills Are Fun! (Score:2)
Try this one [amazon.com]!
How do you lose money on an interface? (Score:2)