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Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

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Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#81

Post by mr_mitm »

orthecreedence wrote: post #67

I still cannot believe Amazon convinced people to install 1984 surveillance in their homes, much less pay for it, for whatever trivial conveniences the stupid thing offers. It's not Amazon's fault but it's just strange to me how sideways our culture is that it's considered normal to let a corporation have unfettered access to your private space and pay them for being there. I get the tradeoff with smartphones...at le…

It can tell me the time when I'm wondering if I should just get up or have two hours left without me having to open my eyes and look for my glasses.

It can set a timer when I have my hands full with veggies and cooking utensils.

It can tell me what the weather will be later that day while I get dressed without me having to navigate my phone to the weather app.

Could I do without all that? Sure. But its usefulness is undeniable to me.

And it was cheap. Also, I consider my phone way more 1984-esque, as it knows and probably tracks my location, half my thoughts, half my conversations, lots of other habits, and could eavesdrop on me all the same.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#82

Post by spyspy »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #76

Just an hour ago I asked Alexa "Is negative ten an even number?" and was shocked when it said "No, minus ten is a negative number and is not even" I asked again and the reply was exactly the same. Variations of the question still resulted in 'negative numbers cannot be even or odd' I checked again 20 minutes later and it then gave me correct answers to the exact same questions. I deeply want Alexa to fail as a produc…

> It is constantly objectively wrong and should not be used for anything important.

Welcome to AI. I got into an argument with a junior dev about some coding best practices the other day and came to find he was using chatgpt as a source for his argument. It’s terrifying anyone takes anything an AI says as truth. Now I’m afraid to even ask my google home simple math or kitchen measurement questions.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#83

Post by fckgw »

arder wrote: post #46
listless wrote: post #21

The entire business model was people being willing to buy things “site unseen”. This is not how people shop. Seeing is an important part of the experience. Also, these losses are staggering. And yet they are still selling these things. I just bought one for the kids dorm room.

It's especially not how people shop at Amazon. You could feasibly imagine a shop where there is basically 1 version of each thing. Like the low cost supermarkets in the UK, they're efficient because they have very small product inventories. In that scenario you say "I'll buy some ketckup" and they only have 1 ketchup so you don't need to see it. You know the shop, you know what you're getting. Amazon is the polar opp…

If you say "add Heinz ketchup" or "add Bounty paper towels" then it works exactly how you describe. It's not really that complicated.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#84

Post by fhub »

saberience wrote: post #40

The strangest thing with Alexa is how it seems to have gotten worse and worse over time. That is, my Alexa right now has issues doing the most basic thing, it can't even play music right anymore. I remember when my friend in LA first showed me Alexa, playing music was all we used it for and it worked great for that. Somehow it's degraded over time and now it barely every picks the song or band I asked for. There was…

I've set a countdown timer and then asked it "how much time is left on the timer?" and it says "You have no timers set" then inside say 30s, the timer goes off. Has happened to me a half dozen times in the last 2 months (at different amounts of time left obviously). This was my primary use case of alexa and now I just use Siri on my phone when my phone is nearby. Siri isn't ideal as I find it hard sometimes to quickly see how much time is left on the timer. But at least it doesn't forget one is running.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#85

Post by crooked-v »

arder wrote: post #46
listless wrote: post #21

The entire business model was people being willing to buy things “site unseen”. This is not how people shop. Seeing is an important part of the experience. Also, these losses are staggering. And yet they are still selling these things. I just bought one for the kids dorm room.

It's especially not how people shop at Amazon. You could feasibly imagine a shop where there is basically 1 version of each thing. Like the low cost supermarkets in the UK, they're efficient because they have very small product inventories. In that scenario you say "I'll buy some ketckup" and they only have 1 ketchup so you don't need to see it. You know the shop, you know what you're getting. Amazon is the polar opp…

Costco is the biggest name I can think of devoted to that model. They're very aggressive about keeping to a short list of high-quality products in each possible subcategory, even for online sales.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#86

Post by paxys »

The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs.

The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. This is also why Amazon's Dash buttons failed. I always want to see a page with the product details and price before I click "buy". Reducing the number of clicks is not going to make me change my decision and suddenly order more things.

If they want to salvage Alexa, they need to forget shopping and start doubling down on the smart home and assistant experience. The tech is still pretty much where it was in 2014. Alexa can set timers and tell me the weather, and...that's basically it. Make it a value add in my life and I wouldn't mind paying a subscription fee for it.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#87

Post by SoftTalker »

Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote: post #28
listless wrote: post #21

The entire business model was people being willing to buy things “site unseen”. This is not how people shop. Seeing is an important part of the experience. Also, these losses are staggering. And yet they are still selling these things. I just bought one for the kids dorm room.

One other reason is that the quality of Amazon listings has really nosedived over the last decade. There are too many spammy merchants in the marketplace now. You cannot just trust the name or description - you need to look at the reviews (or other websites) these days before you feel confident about your purchase. It’s a classic case of mismatched incentives - the Retail org is just focused on increasing sellers and…

The reviews can be bogus too. I've just stopped shopping on Amazon. Their business model isn't trustworthy.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#88

Post by geodel »

orthecreedence wrote: post #67

I still cannot believe Amazon convinced people to install 1984 surveillance in their homes, much less pay for it, for whatever trivial conveniences the stupid thing offers. It's not Amazon's fault but it's just strange to me how sideways our culture is that it's considered normal to let a corporation have unfettered access to your private space and pay them for being there. I get the tradeoff with smartphones...at le…

I don't have it. Last year I visited family in India and surprised to see so many of my tech illiterate family and relatives are all Alexa users. Mother used it to play devotional songs every morning. They don't have anything to order from Amazon , neither there is any notion or concern about privacy. Its pure convenience and work like magic.

As an aside they do seem to be heavily radicalized by social media and hilariously think they were always like this.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#89

Post by bluGill »

pwthornton wrote: post #65

I'd pay a monthly/yearly fee to be able to run Alexa's that can function as a smart home voice controller that does not try to sell me stuff.

But of course there is no option for that as they think advertising is more valuable. Worse they have set the initial price as free and so now most people will object to paying despite how useful it is (I've seen some uses of Alexa that are probably not worth a monthly price, can they make money on $5/year for 10 devices?)

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#90

Post by burningChrome »

Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote: post #28
listless wrote: post #21

The entire business model was people being willing to buy things “site unseen”. This is not how people shop. Seeing is an important part of the experience. Also, these losses are staggering. And yet they are still selling these things. I just bought one for the kids dorm room.

One other reason is that the quality of Amazon listings has really nosedived over the last decade. There are too many spammy merchants in the marketplace now. You cannot just trust the name or description - you need to look at the reviews (or other websites) these days before you feel confident about your purchase. It’s a classic case of mismatched incentives - the Retail org is just focused on increasing sellers and…

>> One other reason is that the quality of Amazon listings has really nosedived over the last decade.

I stopped using Amazon years ago when I had four purchases of completely different and random items all turned up to be counterfeit. One was a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard, the other was a pair of Lucky brand jeans, the other was a pair of Ski goggles and the last thing was a Topo Designs backpack.

I've also noticed that when I came back looking for something simple like a charging block for a new phone, I had pages and pages of Chinese merchants who all had similar looking products but just different brand names stamped on them.

But I agree with everything you're saying, its not just logging on, finding what you need and ordering something. It takes ungodly amounts of due diligence to make sure what you're buying is a) a legit product and b) its not some suspect seller that's paying people to write fake reviews.

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