One problem with Alexa and all other voice assistants is that the older people that have money are precisely the people that detest voice assistants.
So how do you make money?
Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
111–120 of 871 posts
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#112I 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…
So according to you corporations are listening to you 24x7 through your phone and you are okay with that for whatever reason, and they also spy on your home 24x7 through Alexa and that is unacceptable?
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#113>Customers actually used Echo mostly for free apps such as setting alarms and checking the weather. “We worried we’ve hired 10,000 people and we’ve built a smart timer,” said a former senior employee.
That's actually really funny to read. Just last night I was watching my brother cook and he asked Alexa to set a timer (It's pretty much the only thing he uses it for...) I jokingly said "You know, that's a really expensive timer."
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#114Throwaway here but I used to work in Alexa org at Amazon and was amazed by how big the org was (thousands and thousands of people) considering it doesn't seem to be a big revenue generator
I remember constantly hearing about projects other teams were working on thinking "why would anyone use that" or "how would that ever make money"
Just trying to shoehorn alexa into as many domains as possible
It was like empire building at its finest
I would joke that the canary tests were the biggest customer for a lot of services
And the way amazon works with SOA even what seems like a small feature ends up being a couple services, a pizza team of 10 devs + SDM, the overhead is huge
Back when it was announced alexa org was being hit harder by layoffs that did not surprise me
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#115The 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. Thi…
I don't think they tried hard to create an experience user would like. Their shopping features is honestly very lacking.
I think Alexa was just because of Amazon's norm of spending very high on R and D. That was the reason AWS was born. No one thought people would pay something like 10x just for consistency in cloud, but here we are. One AWS could cover 20 Alexas.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#116The 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. Thi…
> I always want to see a page with the product details and price before I click "buy".
Especially given the bonfire of trust that is Amazon "sponsored results". Any time I search for anything on Amazon these days I have to spend a bunch of extra time scrolling around trying to figure which of the search results is genuinely a good deal as opposed to one that's paid for placement.
Given that, why would I ever trust something like an Alexa to select a good deal for me?
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#117One problem with Alexa and all other voice assistants is that the older people that have money are precisely the people that detest voice assistants. So how do you make money?
Older people are not the ones who detest voice assistants (my in-laws love them). It’s the middle-aged (me) who grew up using computers and don’t trust something that’s always listening.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
In addition to that, the inability of Alexa to just answer your question and shut up seemed to have gone way off the tracks. For most of the things I ask my Echo Show, it just follows up with "by the way, xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx.... Pricing is $3/month. Do you want it?" Fuck you. This is worse than the salespeople that bother me at Department Stores.
Minus the sales pitch (which I've never had), this is one of the complaints I have about Google Assistant. "By the way, if you ever want to X, just say Y". Just answer the question asked and then shut up immediately. And, preferably, learn to answer the question asked with more brevity, as well. If I ask "what's the high for today", I don't need to hear "In Cityname, expect a high of 90 degrees", just say "90".
The reason they say "In cityname" is probably because they aren't 100% certain of your city. The preface lets you catch the mistake if it makes it.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#119They have data for AI skimming and training the ai agents. But with voice tracking issues inside homes may not yield structured data
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#120Speaking of Alexa: Can anyone explain the thought process behind making it possible to change the volume in small increments via buttons, but not via voice command (only in 10% increments)? I only use it as an internet radio player for background music and it's extremely annoying that it can't do that.