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Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

arstechnica.com

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Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#351

Post by russellbeattie »

I joined Lab 126 just before we launched the original Echo. After I was "disclosed" on its existence and got one to try, we'd all talk about what we did with it: Laundry timer, alarms, music, weather...

A decade and 25,000 Alexa "apps" later and that's still just about all that anyone does with it.

The Alexa team are (were?) absolute zealots about "Voice UI" and insisted that the entire world was going to be run by voice. You couldn't convince them that voice interfaces weren't the perfect solution to every problem. They were under this delusion that Alexa would become so intelligent it could just figure out what you wanted without you needing to specify - as if HAL level general AI was just around the corner. Every user interface would become voice based. Absolute zealotry.

Combine this with the Rube Goldberg-esque back end where for years literally any "speechlet" implementation had the chance of bringing down the entire service and it's unsurprising this is the result.

I was fired a year or so after I came up with a method for interacting with Fire TVs and Echo Shows which solved the "voice cliff" problem by cutting out the round trip to Alexa and wasn't based on magical thinking. My product plan that I had prototyped and worked on for nearly a year was rejected wholesale.

Obviously, I'm extremely bitter and biased, but I swear to you it was that sort of stubborn cult-like thinking which lead to this headline.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#352

Post by system2 »

ranman wrote: post #225
system2 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can control your computer's software but not Alexa's. The internet doesn't record your home via microphones and submit to FBI: https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/14/amazon-echo-recordings-jud...

From the article: "Police and prosecutors generally don’t expect much evidence from Echo recordings — if any — because Echo speakers are activated with a wake word — usually “Alexa,” the name of the voice assistant." They complied with a legal order - they didn't submit it to the FBI. Do you need some more tinfoil for your hat?

I have enough aluminum wrap at home to enforce my hat. If you read it carefully once again, you will see that they are RECORDING YOU AT ALL TIMES and there only a piece of paper from the government is stopping then from sharing it with others.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#353

Post by pardon_me »

vishnugupta wrote: post #171

I'll add little bit of context from Kindle Reader which was developed while I was at Amazon. Though I was in no way involved with it I frequently interacted with senior folks who were. For first few years, Kindle Reader was a massive sink hole at multiple levels. There was this humongous R&D cost, hardware and software. On a recurring basis Amazon absorbed cellular data charges. Remember this was in early 2008 so cel…

Trillions involved in Amazon entering markets one by one to dominate, their secret to lower prices being sell at a loss. Running a company for decades on loans without a need for profit is quite a force.

Amazon has fuelled the race to the bottom and it seems the company inevitably destroys its own good creations given just a short time.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#354

Post by lsh123 »

thisOtterBeGood wrote: post #266
lsh123 wrote: post #95

I like voice command but Alexa is just not that great. Simple example: there are rooms and each device (e.g. echo or smart lights switch) is assigned to a room. I have multiple echos and multiple smart light switches throughout the house. I come to a room and say “turn on lights”. I would expect Alexa to turn on lights in that room. Sound simple? Nope. Alexa replies “there are multiple devices named lights, which one…

The "light on in current room" works for me. Maybe you have "overloaded" the "light" name.

So I tried. Walking into the kitchen, I said “light on in current room”. Alexa: “did you mean lights in the movie theater”? Why???????????

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#355

Post by maxnevermind »

ndiddy wrote: post #314
consp wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice numbers but don't those Alexa enabled device bring in revenue offsetting the cost and limiting the loss? Or doesn't anyone have an Amazon premium account or buy anything with Alexa on Amazon?

From the article you’re commenting on: One internal document described the business model by saying, "We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices." That plan never really materialized, though. It's not like Alexa plays ad breaks after you use it, so the hope was that people would buy things on Amazon via their voice. Not many people want to trust an AI with spending their money or…

Why would they need to spend billions on validating that model though? Wouldn't it be enough to have just a 1000 or even 100 devices to test it?

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#356

Post by grepfru_it »

rg111 wrote: post #211
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to do that, but as soon as i sort, there is a whole bunch of unrelated stuff for pages... How do you address that?

Yes. If you search for "samsung smartphone" and sort from low to high, all you get are covers and screen protectors in the first many pages.

You need to be specific, it’s helpful when you are looking for the cheapest Samsung sh-213 smartphone. Not for browsing categories of items

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#357

Post by grepfru_it »

tpxl wrote: post #210
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it’s a legitimately hard problem. Sort by lowest price legitimately means show the lowest price item first, even if it’s less relevant. Based on other search systems I have worked with, they probably have an initial fast filter that limits the items from the entire inventory to a loosely matching set (erring on the side of including irrelevant items). Then a more intelligent and expensive ranking system wo…

> erring on the side of including irrelevant items This is the reason for this problem. When searching for 'cat' and sorting by lowest price, the first promoted item doesn't contain the word cat and neither does the first actual result (but they are cat items). If they didn't hoist 'legitimately hard' problems onto themselves, maybe they wouldn't need to solve them.

You can’t buy cats on Amazon, this is a poor example. But if you need the kittie fresh liter-o-magic model 2, then you will get the specific listings or nothing at all (garbage results as op said)

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#358

Post by quesera »

system2 wrote: post #352
ranman wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "Police and prosecutors generally don’t expect much evidence from Echo recordings — if any — because Echo speakers are activated with a wake word — usually “Alexa,” the name of the voice assistant." They complied with a legal order - they didn't submit it to the FBI. Do you need some more tinfoil for your hat?

I have enough aluminum wrap at home to enforce my hat. If you read it carefully once again, you will see that they are RECORDING YOU AT ALL TIMES and there only a piece of paper from the government is stopping then from sharing it with others.

> If you read it carefully once again

Frankly I'm baffled at how you could be as confused as you claim to be.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#359

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ben174 wrote: post #280
piva00 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alexa-powered does not necessarily mean Alexa devices made by Amazon though. For example: I own a multiroom speaker setup not made by Amazon that is Alexa-enabled, all speakers could run Alexa if I had set them up for it (which I won't, ever), and they're very likely counted on this metric. I can remember a multitude of other speakers and devices with an Alexa-enabled badge on their packaging that aren't made by Amaz…

Assuming you're referring to Sonos -- while they were once the best, they seem to just not work well anymore. I'm lucky if I can get it to function correctly. I've observed my brother's Chromecast whole-home audio which cost him a fraction of the price and has a ton more variety - and I'm thinking I may ditch my Sonos setup.

I switched my Sonos speaker over from Alexa to Google and it’s working well enough now.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#360

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

tpxl wrote: post #210
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it’s a legitimately hard problem. Sort by lowest price legitimately means show the lowest price item first, even if it’s less relevant. Based on other search systems I have worked with, they probably have an initial fast filter that limits the items from the entire inventory to a loosely matching set (erring on the side of including irrelevant items). Then a more intelligent and expensive ranking system wo…

> erring on the side of including irrelevant items This is the reason for this problem. When searching for 'cat' and sorting by lowest price, the first promoted item doesn't contain the word cat and neither does the first actual result (but they are cat items). If they didn't hoist 'legitimately hard' problems onto themselves, maybe they wouldn't need to solve them.

I would guess that adding fuzzy match to the candidate selection layer would result in better results after ranking with the default “Featured” ranker. Search teams tend to be pretty data-driven and likely have the ability to test whether a change like this improves revenue or some result satisfaction metric.
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