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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

#371

Post by ghaff »

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…

It probably wasn't for him. Maybe for Amazon.

A lot of Amazon engineers have probably gotten a hard kick in the face over Alexa though.

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

#372

Post by enlyth »

alexa_throwaway wrote: post #348

Throwaway here. I'm the CEO of a fast-growing AI startup. Alex asked to meet with us about a year ago (when we were about 1/10th the size), and after asking us to prepare lots of materials, they indicated they wanted to buy us or invest in us. People warned us not to talk to them because they have a reputation for gathering technical detail, and then trying to copy it rather than striking a deal. Our software could h…

> Our software could have radically accelerated and improved the Alexa experience basically overnight

By improve the Alexa experience, do you mean make it more useful for users or help it shift more chineseware for Amazon? Because as a user, I will never order anything without seeing a picture and reading reviews, voice shopping is dead on arrival

If it's the former, I imagine it's Alexa hooked up to some gimmicky LLM, and I don't see where the actual profit comes from, I would have laughed and left the room too

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

#373

Post by ghaff »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #198
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.

> gross cooking hands I cook a lot and totally get this feeling, but honestly your cooking hands probably aren't gross. And if they are you're probably doing something wrong, in which case some cooking classes will be both very enjoyable and eliminate the problem.

I mean I have a microwave with a cooking timer and it doesn't seem like a big deal to set a timer I can monitor.

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

#374

Post by stacktrust »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #80
ergonaught wrote: post #77

We have several Alexa devices. We use them all the time and for a wide variety of purposes. By any rational, actual customer-connected metric, they are a wild success in this and similar homes. This is an example of Amazon not actually letting the smartest people into the room. We do vast amounts of our shopping via Amazon, but that's through the app and website even when we manage the shopping lists/etc via Alexa. W…

What do you use yours for? Mine’s little more than a fancy voice-activated light switch. Fully agree on the point about not shopping through Alexa. Basic questions are misinterpreted in sometimes hilarious ways.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41062989

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

#375

Post by WalterBright »

mschuster91 wrote: post #334
tgma wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Just choose to buy the way you wish to. Vote with your money and don’t artificially restrict where there’s zero issues. Everything works out in the end. I’d much rather transact in the US than Europe. The entire retail customer experience and return policy is unmatched. The last thing I want is for some government regulation to make it suck like Europe.

> The last thing I want is for some government regulation to make it suck like Europe. Are you aware that Europe has a mandatory 2 year minimum warranty period on consumer purchases? A mandatory 14-days no-questions-asked return window on all purchases? In the US, AFAIK you're fully at the mercy of whatever the vendor so graciously offers you. [1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...

> mandatory 2 year minimum warranty period

Such regulations make products more expensive.

I'm constantly offered warranties when I buy online. I don't want to be forced to buy them, as I don't need them.

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

#376

Post by timClicks »

tgma wrote: post #357
mschuster91 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last thing I want is for some government regulation to make it suck like Europe. Are you aware that Europe has a mandatory 2 year minimum warranty period on consumer purchases? A mandatory 14-days no-questions-asked return window on all purchases? In the US, AFAIK you're fully at the mercy of whatever the vendor so graciously offers you. [1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...

Yes I am aware and I stand by my statement. Have you actually returned stuff to stores over there? I have returned half eaten cake that I did not like the taste to Costco and didn’t have to face a weird looking employee. No law and regulation necessary just capitalism.

That's not capitalism, that's culture. In the USA, it's very common to return products because of a change of mind and/or complain. That isn't universal.

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

#377

Post by WalterBright »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #344
tgma wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Just choose to buy the way you wish to. Vote with your money and don’t artificially restrict where there’s zero issues. Everything works out in the end. I’d much rather transact in the US than Europe. The entire retail customer experience and return policy is unmatched. The last thing I want is for some government regulation to make it suck like Europe.

This is fun. The person you’ve replied to has stated a concrete (what they perceive to be) benefit of consumer protection regulation. One that doesn’t seem to limit choice at all, but rather improves visibility. I’m also inserting my own personal experience here. The country I live in, which isn’t in Europe, has similar regulation in place. In response you’re throwing around some vague notion of “freedom” and vague i…

The tax exclusive prices lets you know how much the government is soaking you, rather than hiding it and blaming it on the business.

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

#378

Post by SahAssar »

asdasdsddd wrote: post #350
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've interviewed many people on Alexa before. From what I gather, its just a giant switch statement, and each individual "path" takes a bunch of effort to support and there are thousands of paths for music, ordering, commands, etc. It's peak AI == if statement architecture.

Do you mean actual coded if statements as in actually human written code like

    if (question.match(/^what is (.*)/)) return wikipedia.search(question)
or something more automated?

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

#379

Post by CamperBob2 »

janalsncm wrote: post #168
PaulHoule wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the killer app was listening to music while doing the dishes.

If Alexa could do the dishes for me that would absolutely be a killer app.

Tie it to an as-yet-unknown startup company that sends people to your house very quickly to perform individual light housekeeping tasks. "MicroMaids.com" or some such.

Sounds invasive and scary, but I would've said (and probably did say) similar things about a service that connected you with strangers for the purpose of getting into their cars.

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

#380

Post by rconti »

harmmonica wrote: post #192
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.

agree with this and we're an alexa household, which I don't love, but we tried a homepod and friggin' siri was (still is?) shockingly inept when it specifically came to setting multiple timers, adjusting timer duration, cancelling timers, etc. it feels pretty dumb having Alexa and all the potential snooping just to set timers and for an inferior Spotify-playing experience (sound quality of the ones we have are not go…

My Sonos Era 100s have the alexa integration and have my spotify account linked to them. You just gave me an idea!

... except, my Sonos Roam responded, and started playing. Not my stereo pair of era 100s on my desk. Let alone all the speakers in my house.

tried again. "I didn't find anything called "office speakers" in your music library". To be fair, she suggested setting up multi-room in the alexa app, which I suppose I could do.

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