Alexa feels like a "First CityWide Change Bank" sketch, writ large.
Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year
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Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suggest putting everything you can into home assistant and relying on that, since you host it yourself. It's also far more powerful than anything amazon provides anyway. Then, the only integration you need is Alexa-> Home Assistant, so there is only one thing that can break.
What is Home Assistant? Google doesn’t help….
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Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year
#93From the article, "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." This is mostly how I use Alexa, but those requests to play music are backed by an annual Amazon Music Unlimited subscription that I wouldn't bother with if I didn't have Alexas throughout the house.
I guess I'm surprised they didn't know this would happen? Why on earth would I shop with Alexa? All price comparisons, reading of reviews and double checking for errors goes out the window. I'm not going to say add paper towels and just trust Alexa to add the best value to my cart. The best it has ever done is remind me when I need to reorder Gatorade powder and I would have ordered that anyway when I was out.
Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year
#94Still boggles my mind that people willingly put these kinds of devices in their homes.
Device/appliance requires WiFi? Strike 1.
Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year
#95I like voice command but Alexa is just not that great. Simple example: there are rooms and each device (e.g. echo or smart lights switch) is assigned to a room. I have multiple echos and multiple smart light switches throughout the house. I come to a room and say “turn on lights”. I would expect Alexa to turn on lights in that room. Sound simple? Nope. Alexa replies “there are multiple devices named lights, which one do you want to turn on?” WTF, I need to spell it “turn on kitchen lights”. Why do I assign devices to rooms? Nobody knows. And the same with everything. I tried to buy something with Alexa multiple times. It’s just horrible: “buy dish soap” (whatever I bought last time, I don’t care). But no: “there 1234 dish soaps available on Amazon, which one do you want to buy?” Like I know ;)
Edit: cleanup
Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year
#96Still boggles my mind that people willingly put these kinds of devices in their homes.
Then your mind is incredibly easily boggled and your threat model is broken.
Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year
#97My echo absolutely became less accurate month after month. Simple commands like “turn off the lights” would be 50/50. Very low-value technology and it certainly gives one pause about the feasibility of AI when something so basic with so much capital and years of effort is still fairly poor.
I’ve been wondering if I’ve been going crazy. It’s gotten way worse for me too. I have to ask 3-4 times to turn the lights off sometimes.
Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year
#98These companies are all quasi confused about what these devices are. Voice isn't the thing, it's a mode of interacting with the thing. The thing is: the digital home. Amazon is comically dropping the ball here. They have the tablets. They have the TVs. They have the reach. They have the home security division. Integrate, integrate, integrate. Alexa is just a mode of communicating with the digital home. It's a feature…
I sometimes wonder if companies have a plan or do things and it all just kinda falls into place. I used to make fun of Steam for the DRM part, but when combined with their Proton effort, OS and Deck all of a sudden all the crazy puzzle pieces fell into place, I started to wonder to what extent it pure chance vs conscious planning by Gabe.
I agree with your point on integration. All the pieces seem to be there already. I would not want it, but I clearly was not target audience to begin with ( and this stuff was flying off the shelf life crazy ).
Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year
#99I rate my voice assistants by the quality of their "animal of the day"-- by this metric, Google Home is the clear winner. It's hard to even get Alexa to play you an animal sound, while Google has a really thoughtful Animal of the Day feature with sounds and animals facts. My toddler listens to the animal of the day at least once a day on it, comprising >50% of my overall voice assistant usage, and I love to hope that…
My toddler also loves this feature. Can confirm animal (and rocket/train/baby) sounds make up a significant portion of voice assist in my house as well.
Fun fact, if you Google voice search animal sounds on a pixel, chrome will (most of the time) serve up a whole animal sounds dashboard with pixel art.
Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year
#100I won’t buy a taking wire tap again until they unlock profanity mode. I seriously want it to say “The next fucking movie time is 10 o’ god damn clock. You want the tickets or not bitch?” That would entertain me so damn much. Instead I get this sterile interaction that is ok-not-great and I can’t get the device to drop even one eff bomb. Lame.
I got Siri to say naughty things by careful instructive naming of my lamps and groups of lights.