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Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

arstechnica.com

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Re: Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

#31

Post by djeastm »

donatj wrote: post #13

Being able to yell "Alexa, turn my lights off" has been handy. Alexa recently interrupting me with notifications that are just "Hey, some garbage you don't want is on sale" has me thinking about throwing the thing out.

>has me thinking about throwing the thing out

Me, as well, but there's got to be someone whose job it is to calculate just how often it can interrupt people with ads without them throwing the device away because I've been saying this for years and I still have my glorified alarm clock/light switch around.

Re: Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

#32

Post by tomjen3 »

josefritzishere wrote: post #4

Stop buying this junk. Turn off the service. Only revenue loss will motivate better corporate behavior

Amazon is not making money on Alex. Thats the problem. They assumed that people would buy a lot more this way, but in reality people just want a robot servant that sets timers and play music.

Re: Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

#33

Post by danielbln »

mrweasel wrote: post #28

Is Amazon actively trying to kill of their Echo/Alexa business? Every story about Alexa for the past six months, maybe a little more, have been about Amazon taking steps to dismantling anything with in their business or product line up that could potentially be useful. If they aren't making money, and don't believe that they ever will, then why not simply shutdown the whole thing? Is this some weird way of doing that…

I need it to turn on/off lights, tell me time/weather, set timers and that's pretty much it. They can shut off everything else for all care. Maybe provide me with a GPT level conversational agent, hell, I take some Llama3.1 with function calling on Amazon Bedrock.

Re: Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

#34

Post by danielbln »

mrweasel wrote: post #28

Is Amazon actively trying to kill of their Echo/Alexa business? Every story about Alexa for the past six months, maybe a little more, have been about Amazon taking steps to dismantling anything with in their business or product line up that could potentially be useful. If they aren't making money, and don't believe that they ever will, then why not simply shutdown the whole thing? Is this some weird way of doing that…

I need it to turn on/off lights, tell me time/weather, set timers and that's pretty much it. They can shut off everything else for all care. Maybe provide me with a GPT level conversational agent, hell, I take some Llama3.1 with function calling on Amazon Bedrock.

Re: Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

#35

Post by akmarinov »

danielbln wrote: post #34
mrweasel wrote: post #28

Is Amazon actively trying to kill of their Echo/Alexa business? Every story about Alexa for the past six months, maybe a little more, have been about Amazon taking steps to dismantling anything with in their business or product line up that could potentially be useful. If they aren't making money, and don't believe that they ever will, then why not simply shutdown the whole thing? Is this some weird way of doing that…

I need it to turn on/off lights, tell me time/weather, set timers and that's pretty much it. They can shut off everything else for all care. Maybe provide me with a GPT level conversational agent, hell, I take some Llama3.1 with function calling on Amazon Bedrock.

That loses them money and with no way to monetize- they have no incentive to keep it around

Re: Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

#37

Post by akmarinov »

ransom1538 wrote: post #26

Alexa should just use chatgpt, you would have a trillion dollar empire in 10 minutes. That would useful. Otherwise, alexa is usually dumber than my dog.

How? There’s no monetizing Alexa or ChatGPT in its current form

Re: Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

#38

Post by SoftTalker »

minorbug wrote: post #17

Are there any open source projects that mimic some of the functionality of the Show line?

A screen that shows photos? Absolutely anything. A Raspberry Pi or other SBC can do that with a variety of "screensaver" programs. Or a cheap Android tablet, stick it in a nice picture frame if you want. Or any number of purpose built "digital picture frame" devices (not sure if any of those are open source, per se).

Re: Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

#39

Post by MyFedora »

mrweasel wrote: post #28

Is Amazon actively trying to kill of their Echo/Alexa business? Every story about Alexa for the past six months, maybe a little more, have been about Amazon taking steps to dismantling anything with in their business or product line up that could potentially be useful. If they aren't making money, and don't believe that they ever will, then why not simply shutdown the whole thing? Is this some weird way of doing that…

There never was a business here to begin with. Amazon wants to kill Alexa because they couldn't find a way to monetize it.
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