Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions • Hacker News Board

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

#641

Post by cynicalsecurity » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 9:57 AM UTC

Jaauthor wrote: post #346

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 mean, yeah - but take a step back from there. Why is this technology only for commerce? Why is technology only useful if it can be economically exploited? That's a deeper issue and not one you can get a ChatGPT-generated answer to. Culturally, we're hostage to psychopath companies and the investors that love them. Nobody in a hedge fund somewhere is going "hey folks, we should add a 'this makes people's lives bette…

That sounds really noble, but unfortunately, the world revolves around money. It's not just the psychopath hedge funds investors, a sweet old lady living next door to you would start killing and stealing if she suddenly wouldn't have anything to eat.

Other systems like communism floped and failed royally. Feufalism or slavery are out of question, they are pure vomit, even though Russians live under feudalism.

Business and charity are different things, you can't mix them.

Alexa is a lame product. People still have it simply because they feel bad about throwing it out. No one wants smart homes, people want cheap and affordable homes. No customer wants quick or convenient buying process, people are looking for cheap or at least not overpriced products and services instead. And putting way too sophisticated AI in Alexa would be stupidly expensive.

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

#642

Post by kristopolous » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 9:58 AM UTC

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…

The standard profile from these tech companies is that the consumer is staggeringly, profoundly, unimaginably daft and they're either looking to shop or to have some venal vapid interaction devoid of substance.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, this is exactly how they design their products.

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

#643

Post by cromulent » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 10:08 AM UTC

rickdeckard wrote: post #628

asfodelsu wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many places in Europe: Normal price per item big letters, price per Kg small letters. Problem solved

Comparable unit-pricing: A mandate brought to you by the European Union. You know, this allegedly evil entity that always hassles with the free market and annoys global companies. /s

Whilst I am waiting for my number in a chemist, I kill time by finding the highest price per litre. It's normally some anti-aging cream at well over €1000 / l.

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

#644

Post by animuchan » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 10:26 AM UTC

rickdeckard wrote: post #628

asfodelsu wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many places in Europe: Normal price per item big letters, price per Kg small letters. Problem solved

Comparable unit-pricing: A mandate brought to you by the European Union. You know, this allegedly evil entity that always hassles with the free market and annoys global companies. /s

This is not just EU, in our here Middle Eastern country there's the same law. (And also mandatory "high sugar" warning stickers on unhealthy stuff.)

Customer-friendly regulation sure feels nice.

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

#645

Post by baxtr » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 10:27 AM UTC

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 would love to see their initial “vision doc”, which amazon usually writes for new products.

How were they envisioning to make lots of money with it in the first place?

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

#646

Post by gnfargbl » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 10:29 AM UTC

elpakal wrote: post #123

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…

> Make it a value add in my life and I wouldn't mind paying a subscription fee for it. I dunno, I feel like the value was priced in the purchase price for me. I would not consider paying both a purchase price and subscription fee for it and probably not a subscription fee at all because all they ever do is go up. What would I do with this dumb robot in my house when I don't agree to pay for their latest fee structure…

Exactly. In our household Alexa is used for playing Spotify, switching some lights on and off, and as an intercom. There is absolutely no chance that I am paying a subscription for a device that is pretty bad as an intercom, and only okay as a light controller/speaker.

In fact, this quote from the article is a little concerning:

> The new technology would more seamlessly allow users to control functions like smart home devices using their voices rather than opening an app.

Problem is, the existing technology can already do this, most of the time. It sounds very much like Amazon is going to try and charge me a monthly fee for something I already have. That's not going to work out.

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

#647

Post by mbesto » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 10:35 AM UTC

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…

> The problem is that consumers don't behave like that.

Actually they do, just not on Amazon. If you search for 'tide pods' you'll find a WHOLE page of product listings on the first page of the search results full of duplicates and confusing quantity packages. If I do the same on Target.com there are roughly 10~12 products I can actually choose from which is much easier to decipher which one to actually order.

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

#648

Post by mattmaroon » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 10:40 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #533

mattmaroon wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, and I know this is a radical idea, but I think it could work, sell the hardware for more than it costs to make. I’m pretty happy with having a speaker in one of my room that can play whatever I want, all at the same time, and some basic assistant functionality. If they cost twice as much, I would still buy them.

>sell the hardware for more than it costs to make. That probably won't work because, at least according to Wikipedia, at some point 10k (!) people worked on Alexa. I'd start at the other end, maybe don't hire an entire Death Star worth of people to develop a voice assistant. That'd probably have saved a few billion here and there.

Well I mean going forward of course. Have to ignore the sunk cost.

But yeah they clearly spun their wheels on the software side.

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

#649

Post by wiether » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 10:40 AM UTC

DaoVeles wrote: post #423

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…

I call businesses like that Llama's. When a Llama (the creature) generally starts getting friendly towards someone it means they are about to get nasty and attack/spit in your face. Amazon and Microsoft are two great examples of this. When they get close to you be weary. Go for the buy out or watch out for them trying to get ideas to steal.

> When a Llama (the creature) generally starts getting friendly towards someone it means they are about to get nasty and attack/spit in your face.

Is that why Meta decided to call their _open source_ LLM this way? It would make a lot of sense!

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

#650

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 10:43 AM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #619

regularfry wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's malicious compliance. They probably wouldn't show anything other than the pack price if they had a choice, so there's something forcing them to show unit prices. So given that they have to show them anyway, they have an opportunity to inject profitable confusion. Non-metric units are just icing on the cake.

I remember that around year 2000 a coworker from England told me that petrol pumps changed the prices from pounds per gallon to pounds per liter when the cost crossed the one pound mark. There is some malice in that too. Something like that could be the origin of using different units in those USA shops, not to cross some psychological threshold. It's been a long time since I went to the UK so I can't say if petrol i…

It is, and everything is required to be sold in metric units. Except for things like pipe fittings and screw sizes, but even those have to show the metric somewhere.

There's an effort to switch car efficiency from mpg (higher is better) to "l/100km" (smaller is better), because the latter has more intuitive scaling as well as being properly metric.

There were definitely people complaining about the price hike when the currency changed, but that was back in 1971 so it's only boomers who'll bring it up.