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Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

arstechnica.com

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Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#281

Post by jvanderbot »

subpixel wrote: post #85
enumjorge wrote: post #44

> Not many people want to trust an AI with spending their money or buying an item without seeing a picture or reading reviews. I wonder how much the decline in quality of Amazon's marketplace has affected other parts of the company's business including Alexa. I remember a time when, if I wanted to buy something online, I'd just buy off Amazon without shopping around. They almost always had the best price, their shipp…

This. Alexa is a trust-interface. Many consumers don’t trust Amazon anymore, so they sure as hell won’t trust some bot to spend their money for them there. I just decided not to buy an item from Amazon despite it being cheaper, because I need it and I don’t have time to deal with it being a model from a previous year or whatever the catch may be.

I've owned and used Alex-powered devices for a while and have never spent a dime via that infernal machine. I use it to turn on the radio, change the station, play audible books, stream podcasts, toggle lights, and get the weather.

Hell, I don't even know how to buy anything via Alexa, and the one time I tried "Order some cheerios", it never came.

Alexa doesn't even push me to order things. It does, however, push me to use Amazon Music, which is a total nonstarter for probably everyone.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#282

Post by sokoloff »

michaelt wrote: post #279
sokoloff wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s got to be at least $5-7 to take my payment, pick, pack, and deliver it.

I can get a wifi-enabled microcontroller delivered from China for $3.40 [1] including payment, picking, packing and delivery. And the product is at least $1 of that price. I find it hard to believe Amazon is spending more than $2 on payment and delivery. [1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004563128378.html

Can you get it the next day/day after? Speed has a value and locality has a cost.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#283

Post by withinboredom »

ben174 wrote: post #280
piva00 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alexa-powered does not necessarily mean Alexa devices made by Amazon though. For example: I own a multiroom speaker setup not made by Amazon that is Alexa-enabled, all speakers could run Alexa if I had set them up for it (which I won't, ever), and they're very likely counted on this metric. I can remember a multitude of other speakers and devices with an Alexa-enabled badge on their packaging that aren't made by Amaz…

Assuming you're referring to Sonos -- while they were once the best, they seem to just not work well anymore. I'm lucky if I can get it to function correctly. I've observed my brother's Chromecast whole-home audio which cost him a fraction of the price and has a ton more variety - and I'm thinking I may ditch my Sonos setup.

Building your own is also ridiculously simple and as cheap or expensive as you’re willing to spend on speakers and/or drivers.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#284

Post by rapnie »

h4n1 wrote: post #198
Hellion wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet that’s at cost tbh. You’d be surprised how cheap things have gotten. However, r&d and every single Alexa request costs money. So from day one, it’s losing money.

How much are two hundred million microphones in earshot of private conversations worth?

One Zuckerberg.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#285

Post by piva00 »

ben174 wrote: post #280
piva00 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alexa-powered does not necessarily mean Alexa devices made by Amazon though. For example: I own a multiroom speaker setup not made by Amazon that is Alexa-enabled, all speakers could run Alexa if I had set them up for it (which I won't, ever), and they're very likely counted on this metric. I can remember a multitude of other speakers and devices with an Alexa-enabled badge on their packaging that aren't made by Amaz…

Assuming you're referring to Sonos -- while they were once the best, they seem to just not work well anymore. I'm lucky if I can get it to function correctly. I've observed my brother's Chromecast whole-home audio which cost him a fraction of the price and has a ton more variety - and I'm thinking I may ditch my Sonos setup.

My setup is from Audio Pro, a Swedish brand. Never really thought Sonos were good value for the price and sound quality to be honest... Not an audiophile but I always look for the best bang for the buck I'm spending on audio.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#286

Post by ben_w »

h4n1 wrote: post #198
Hellion wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet that’s at cost tbh. You’d be surprised how cheap things have gotten. However, r&d and every single Alexa request costs money. So from day one, it’s losing money.

How much are two hundred million microphones in earshot of private conversations worth?

Demonstrably very little, at least with regard to $€¥.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#287

Post by dreamcompiler »

29athrowaway wrote: post #80
thepasswordis wrote: post #28

I use my Alexa all the time, but 99% of it is: Alexa, time! Alexa, set an alarm for 5 minutes! Alexa how many minutes left? Alexa, turn off/on all the lights! That’s basically it. I wrote some apps for it a long time ago to do custom stuff like read me some Reddit pages, but the SDK changed or something and eventually they just died and it wasn’t obvious to me how to recreate it/not worth the effort. I really wish th…

I use Alexa for everything. - To ask for the weather, weather alerts, relative humidity, precipitation, wind speed - To ask about outdoor air quality, indoor air quality (requires air quality monitors) - As a baby monitor (crying detector routine) - To know when to empty the dehumidifier bucket (humidity > 60% routine) - To know when someone left the AC fan off (high CO2 routine) - To know when to open the window (hi…

I'd love to do all this stuff too, but if the price I have to pay is an unauditable always-on listening device in my home that sends my every utterance to a server controlled by a FAANG, and which speaks verbal ads to boot, that's an absolute dealbreaker.

It's horrifying to me that anyone would allow such a device in their home. Someone gave me an Echo as a gift once. I smashed it and buried it in the back yard.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#288

Post by musingsole »

thorncorona wrote: post #251
hateful wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is because you are the product, not the customer. The customer is the record company paying to get their artists music into your ears. I've waited my whole life for AI assistants. I remember being really excited about the promise in the 90s. But it's this is it? Voluntary advertisement consumption? Very disappointing.

Hanlon's Razor -- maybe Alexa matches to the most probable match and not many people are expecting what OP expects Alexa to play?

Which is the core problem with Alexa: why is a personal assistant getting worse at helping me specifically (even if it's better for the majority of users)?

Alexa arriving with a default profile for generic recognition makes sense -- but after that, it should have learned me, my voice, my commands.

Instead, it was one more not so subtle demand from Silicon Valley to become synonymous with their Product Persona -- or be ignored.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#289

Post by mcphage »

consp wrote: post #213
achow wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2020 - It took Amazon four years to populate the world with 100 million Alexa-powered devices. It took the company just one more year to more than double that number. The e-commerce titan announced Monday that there are now "hundreds of millions of Alexa-enabled devices" in customers' hands worldwide, a massive increase from the 100 million it announced last January. https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/amazon-sees-a…

Nice numbers but don't those Alexa enabled device bring in revenue offsetting the cost and limiting the loss? Or doesn't anyone have an Amazon premium account or buy anything with Alexa on Amazon?

We have I think… 5? Echo devices in my house, including an echo dot Amazon just sold me for $1 because it was my “Primeaversary". I haven’t purchased a single thing through them.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#290

Post by akiselev »

MMAesawy wrote: post #174
AlexandrB wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean for Alexa to "pay" for AWS though? Is it recorder as revenue somewhere or does it just get accounted for internally?

Even if it's Amazon paying Amazon, there is an opportunity cost to using all those cloud resources. Every resource used internally is a resource not available for sale externally.

One of the main selling points of the cloud is dynamic scaling which necessitates that Amazon have enough servers for some multiple of their customers’ base load. As long as internal Amazon resources are given a lower priority and booted in favor of customers during leak load, the opportunity cost is basically zero leaving just the marginal cost of electricity and hardware maintenance.
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