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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

#221

Post by JoshTriplett »

im3w1l wrote: post #118
JoshTriplett wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I'm aware, though in general the devices have a location specified. But even then, "90 in cityname" would suffice.

There are many other interactions in which almost every word is unnecessary noise and can't even be explained away as a confirmation.

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

#223

Post by liveoneggs »

graton wrote: post #158
francisofascii wrote: post #96

We pay $179 a year for Amazon music. We use Alexa all the time to play music. How is that not a huge revenue success? It sounds like they are not properly factoring that in as a downstream impact.

For $168/year you could get YouTube Premium, which comes with YouTube music and ad-free YouTube (not counting ads inside the videos done by the content creator).

can you stream youtube music on the alexa?

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

#224

Post by mgraupner »

stronglikedan wrote: post #202
mgraupner wrote: post #120

Speaking 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.

If you say, "volume 15 percent" it will set it to 15%.

Not working for me, as I said in another comment, asking it to set it to 15% will set it to 20%.

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

#225

Post by textlapse »

If Amazon (and Google and Apple) couldn’t figure out how to monetize a voice/chat ‘app’ after a decade of plowing money into it, how does the whole LLM market come to fruition?

Genuinely curious as I see a similar trend: there is definite consumer interest, but just like ‘kitchen timers on Alexa’ what if the LLMs main use case is simply to generate funny memes and the most basic RAG?

How does this manifest into a trillion or gazillion dollar market? What am I missing?

(I am discounting GH Copilot/Cody and the like as they are an extension of intellisense/ dev oriented workflows which really is a fantastic use case)

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

#226

Post by Nimitz14 »

ysacfanboi wrote: post #24
shell_game wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Amazon actually have talent and resources though?

Not any more. Majority of talent got fired. Whoever is hired now will be gone in a couple years (says the internal tracking software that tells you how "new" you are across all of Amazon). That kind of churn ensures no real progress can be made. Just throw Alexa away already. It's a wrap.

The actually good people left long before anyone got fired.

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

#227

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

throwway120385 wrote: post #182
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 feel like there's an unmet market opportunity here for a physical timer that is voice activated without a connection to the internet.

Make it a microwave feature (I use the convenient timer on the microwave far more frequently than any other) and I could see it really taking off.

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

#228

Post by mikehollinger »

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…

>If they want to salvage Alexa, they need to forget shopping and start doubling down on the smart home and assistant experience.

Agree.

Go look at the Alexa Skills for any random category and sort by "best sellers," then sort again by "average review." There isn't an ecosystem.

For Lifestyle, the "4th best selling" [1] skill is "North American Roofing," which is for a company in Tampa.

There should be more there. Given the devices with a touch-sensitive screen, some form of presence detection, location awareness, and other things, there's a lot of missed potential there.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/s?i=alexa-skills&bbn=13727922011&rh=n...

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

#229

Post by deanCommie »

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…

What do you need Alexa to do with your smart home that it can't do today? https://www.amazon.com/alexa-smart-home/b?ie=UTF8&node=21442...

Seems like the voice-smart-home problem is the same as the voice-shopping problem: There is a limit to how many features you can/want to support in a voice interface.

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

#230

Post by dmazzoni »

S0y wrote: post #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 expen…

That's the thing, it's not very expensive! It's actually a pretty excellent price for what it does well. That's why so many people bought them and continue to use them.
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