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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

#61

Post by dylan604 »

tiltowait wrote: post #51
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.

How does shopping with one even work in practice? Most items I buy on Amazon require careful scrutiny to make sure I’m getting the right thing. What I want is almost never the first result. This is true even in areas that feel like they should be easy, like video games.

For those that do have an Alexa, how does this work? Do you have to haggle with Alexa, and then it picks from the different sellers that meets your haggling? It seems like a much longer conversation is needed than "Alexa, add Tide Pods to my list" as Amazon propaganda wants you to believe.

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

#62

Post by wdh505 »

infinityplus1 wrote: post #6
mPReDiToR wrote: post #2

I'm never paying for Alexa. They get latinum enough from datamining and privacy intrusions. As soon as they put adverts on, or charge for the smart timer/lightswitch functionality, I'm out. There are OSS projects and I have RasPi devices sitting around. Burn an SD, plug a mic in, off we go. Alexa found its way into homes because it was free and does what people want. Don't screw that up, add value. Make people want t…

I would pay for a Jarvis style holographic AI, even if not fully AGI.

I saw some waifu tech that is currently available in Japan that should be able to have the holographic part and a port for current ai

https://blog.dejapan.com/2018/08/life-in-japan/gatebox-ai-vi...

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

#63

Post by HDThoreaun »

pjmlp wrote: post #31

All these voice assistants are gimmicks to me, they hardly provide any value, plus never get a proper Portuguese support.

Voice controlled radio + timers is more than worth the cost of an Alexa device. Why does it have to be more than that?

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

#64

Post by pjmlp »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #63
pjmlp wrote: post #31

All these voice assistants are gimmicks to me, they hardly provide any value, plus never get a proper Portuguese support.

Voice controlled radio + timers is more than worth the cost of an Alexa device. Why does it have to be more than that?

If it doesn't speak my native language without gimmicks, it is trash.

Additionally, I already have a radio and alarm clock.

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

#66

Post by adolph »

klodolph wrote: post #57
arder wrote: post #44

That "Downstream impact" metric sounds like a big yikes. Massive incentives to game that metric and before you know it you've got 10 projects all claiming credit for some theoretical downstream impact all of which are actually just canabalizing existing revenue. Like, Amazon is doing $5Bn of revenue selling tide pods, the Alexa team make some claim about people's likeliness to order tide pods via the Alexa and before…

Tech companies have to cannibalize existing revenue to stay relevant long-term. If you don’t cannibalize your own revenue streams, then some other company will figure out how to take your revenue. ( Innovator’s Dilemma takes this concept and stretches it out across a whole book.) That said… Alexa seems like such a waste. It’s like Sony making an MP3 player. Sony Electronics was never going to make a good MP3 player a…

I don’t Sony Electronics can blame the music side of the house for Memory Stick.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_Stick

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

#67

Post by orthecreedence »

I 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 least they have utility, and at least some weak guarantee of privacy (for whatever that's worth). What does Alexa really bring to the table? It can flip a light switch for me? I have a finger for that. It can tell me the weather? I can open the curtains and look outside. It can deliver counterfeit garbage to my house? No thanks.

Who is enticed by this thing, and why?

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

#68

Post by treis »

arder wrote: post #44

That "Downstream impact" metric sounds like a big yikes. Massive incentives to game that metric and before you know it you've got 10 projects all claiming credit for some theoretical downstream impact all of which are actually just canabalizing existing revenue. Like, Amazon is doing $5Bn of revenue selling tide pods, the Alexa team make some claim about people's likeliness to order tide pods via the Alexa and before…

It does seem important for the ecosystem. I'm on Google Music because Spotify & Amazon Music didn't work well with android auto & Google Home.

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

#70

Post by skellera »

arder wrote: post #44

That "Downstream impact" metric sounds like a big yikes. Massive incentives to game that metric and before you know it you've got 10 projects all claiming credit for some theoretical downstream impact all of which are actually just canabalizing existing revenue. Like, Amazon is doing $5Bn of revenue selling tide pods, the Alexa team make some claim about people's likeliness to order tide pods via the Alexa and before…

Downstream impact is gamed internally at Amazon.

People crucified Sears for making teams compete internally but that’s literally what’s happening at Amazon at a larger scale. Teams and orgs regularly push back against helping each other. Will not waste resources to help others.

I don’t believe Amazon has a good outlook over 5 years unless they get lucky with random bets. They no longer innovate, they just copy and try to compete with scale. Even then, it doesn’t work because no one working on that product actually cares about the problem so startups can easily outcompete with “customer obsession.”

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