Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

Post by Twirrim » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 7:39 PM UTC

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #97

paxys wrote: post #86

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. Thi…

I don't think any of that is true. If Costco produced such features in their imaginary product, people may use it. Why? Because Costco has proven itself trustworthy of a blind repeat purchase. You could trust the price you're paying is typical and fair. Amazon on the other hand...

Post by rendang » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 7:43 PM UTC

Twirrim wrote: post #161

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of that is true. If Costco produced such features in their imaginary product, people may use it. Why? Because Costco has proven itself trustworthy of a blind repeat purchase. You could trust the price you're paying is typical and fair. Amazon on the other hand...

This is the inherent problem with Amazon's support of 3rd party vendors through their platform, and the general lack of quality controls. I increasingly use specific companies for purchases, because I can't guarantee that what I order through Amazon will actually be the product I wanted, or be at the quality level I'd expect. It's getting to be absolutely awful.

Post by emj » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 7:45 PM UTC

sethhochberg wrote: post #156

philodelta wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't get me wrong, it is silly, but also being able to set a timer without touching anything with your gross cooking hands is unironically a wonderful feature.

I like my Apple Watch for other reasons, but do have to admit that raising it to my face to set a timer or do a quick unit conversion while cooking is by far the most common "active" way I use it. I also use voice control a lot for music when I'm wearing gloves while working with greasy bicycle parts or when gardening. An entire product segment for when your hands are dirty...

Post by leni536 » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 7:49 PM UTC

loa_in_ wrote: post #14

skhunted wrote: post #12

Alexa can add things to your shopping list but not take them off. You have to manually delete items in your shopping cart. This exemplifies why Alexa was never going to be successful. It is a user hostile experience.

I can see why it was the case from engineering standpoint: adding a name from spoken phrase to a list is trivial, but looking up an item (that might not even be there) from a list based on a spoken phrase is prone to transcription errors. The user might refer to it with different phrasing than when it was added too. This is feasible only very recently with LLMs.

Post by bagels » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 7:49 PM UTC

spike021 wrote: post #124

alexathrowawa9 wrote: post #114

Throwaway 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 bui…

I once heard about a feature dogfooding invite that was sent out specifically for people with babies because they wanted to use Alexa always-listening to activate when a baby was crying and automatically order diapers or something ridiculous like that.