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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

Feels like it's getting worse too. For example, things like Google Home and Alexa discourage choice. "Order me a pizza" means they are now either kingmakers in the space, or incented to open their own pizza business.

I'm not a fan of big government, but at some point depending solely on their goodwill seems dangerous.

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In general, I agree with your warning that Alexa and co. could limit choice. But is really anyone ordering just "a pizza" or "a lightning cable" by voice without further specification? Isn't customer satisfaction key for using the assistant in the future again?

If using a virtual assistant for ordering, I'd instruct Alexa (or Google or Siri) to order a specific pizza in a specific size from a specific pizza delivery. And if not satisfied with the result of a request, I'd want to be able to specify: "Never order again from the delivery you used last." - or I'd never use the assistant for this task again.

But most likely, I'd just order by hand or phone (instead of voice assistant) as long as I can't tell the voice assistant to just order "my standard pizza" based on my order history.

But Alexa extracting a 5-10% (or even 30%) fee on all pizza places through that access definitely hurts all pizza businesses, anywhere. And those that opt out will miss that business.

How is it definitely? It may hurt or may not. Credit card systems also charge a commission and yet every pizza place prefers to pay it rather than accept only cash, because of the benefits credit cards provide.

Justeat is an online pizza ordering service from Denmark which also requires pizza shops to sign up for it and pay a fairly large fee. This started out very well, but when it gained massive traction they ramped up the fees and pizza joints started complaining that it was killing them. Of course it was too late to opt out since all the consumers had gotten used to going to the website.

The fee started out at 10% and went up in steps up to 20%. At several points pizza shops tried banding together and staging mass "walkouts", but it never worked.

They should increase prices then. If customers like ordering through a voice assistant then make them pay for it. Any supplier for a pizza place can raise prices at any moment -- ingredients, rent, utilities. It's just business, nothing new. As long as it's not a monopoly it won't hurt businesses.

The internet ate into profits of paper media, the car ate into profits of horse carts, the mechanical loom ate into the profits of those operating hand looms (hello Mr. Ludd), the printing press ate onto the profits of scribes.

Should we have kept the scribes?

How can adding the Alexa business harm the pizza place, and opting out also harm them?

Protection rackets are funny that way.

Edit: Yes, that's a bit exaggerated. Just noting that a dominant outside force can change your fortunes whether you choose to play or not.

People choose defaults even when they can change them, even for important products, like a maps app.

So for household commodities ? sure they'll choose the defaults.

"order me a pizza from domino's." "order me a pizza from papa john's."

Right, but you see the difference from a Google web search for "order a pizza", right?

Right, but what if I want Google Home or Alexa to make the decision for me because it can make more informed decision than me. Assuming, Alexa/Google has the pertinent information such as user reviews and has approximate data on how many people visit the store.

"AI" bots offering marketplace auctions for fulfillment on things like "order a pizza", "call a car", etc. is the next field in advertising. I'm sure it will lead to lots of money, not sure it will make the world a better place or how much it will further entrench the dominant players.

How is that different from a yellow pages?

If you are going to say "amazon only offers you one choice" that is an assumption you could make of yellow pages as well (it's a commercial publication, they don't have to list everything). The yellow pages chooses to accept payment from competitors to offer more choice. Amazon could do the same.

And if you are going to say "what is yellow pages?" then damn am I old :)

I'm specifically referring to the voice interface of Alexa and Google Home. Voice doesn't lend itself well to listing out choices. The yellow pages has many listings for pizza.

There are fair ways to implement it, sure. We're depending on their goodwill though.

However, this specific thing is just one of many ways it's getting worse. Google, for example, is slowly, but surely pushing organic results down the page, for their own benefit.

I'm saying that in general, the problem is getting worse, for a variety of reasons.

Edit: Yes, there are workarounds, like using the App. I'm not talking about how to solve this for myself though. I'm talking about the collective effects.

..then use the app? Echo actually gives you multiple options in the app in response to a voice query about commercial establishments as a general rule. Would be a good application for the Echo Show as well

yellow page publishers don't actually know the details of my orders.

Indirectly they do because the more orders you make through yellow pages, the more a pizza place will pay to be listed

Also are you complaining that Amazon will be able to order the options it gives you based on your personal preference?

"...are you complaining that Amazon..."

No. You asked "How is that different from a yellow pages?"

That's a pretty big difference, imo.

" the more orders you make through yellow pages, the more a pizza place will pay to be listed".

Huh? They might pay that, if they feel they're getting a good return, and/or to block a competitor from a particular page/size/etc. But they don't automatically pay more the more pizzas they sell to people who found them in the YP.

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