$5B loss from one business line is a lot. Maybe this manner of investment inspired Zuck on the metaverse.
In my experience you learn how to make them do 1-2 things. You learn a few patterns. But beyond that, even if they work 95% of the time, that 1 in 20 is annoying enough to make me not want to use it and just push a few buttons.
Maybe case in point is using voice in the car. It should be the best, most obvious application. Yet aside from maybe texting, people want things like Apple CarPlay - a big touchscreen - not voice commands.
The only good use case I've seen is if you're having a conversation / debate with someone you can use them as a real-time fact checker.
Do you have an uncommon accent?
I don't know the answer, but i wonder why you say that's what people want, since the high end BMW and Audi and Mercedes cars etc now all have their own voice commands to _avoid_ using the touchscreen (presumably for driving).
I wonder how they even get a survey that's representative.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/29/apple-carplay-massive-succes...
I use Google Home and it has a voice match feature which will only accept on commands for allowed voices. Some people might not like this for the privacy aspect though.
Of course this is all academic. Anyone can get into a home via the windows. It's just that half of all Americans live in a home that has a gun, so getting out alive might not be as easy as getting in.
Alarms, timers for the kids, playing music all day, asking for knowledge questions, etc. For example yesterday my kids asked "which is after a tortoise or a snail". The kids use it a lot because they don't have phones to google stuff but they always have Alexa to ask.
Setting multiple named alarms while cooking and often my hands are not clean to handle a phone or they're holding something going in an oven or they're stirring something.
Adding things to Todo lists or shopping lists as I notice them.
Setting alarms when I set a cup of tea to brew so I don't forget about it. I have to walk back to the room to stop it ringing, which means I can add milk and pick up my tea.
Changing what I'm listening to while washing dishes.
I'm already distractible enough, not having to pick up my phone to do them also means I'm less likely to get distracted.
There are just so many buttons to push, it's not only about lights. Remember, they have 'routines' that can easily equate to dozens of button pushes. Even without routines, I can tell it to set all lights in a room at some percentage. And no, I can't just wire a dimmer, because they are spread across light fixtures. Sometimes your hands are busy and it's good to be able to control stuff.
If anything, they should make it easier to add commands (I want to be able to change 3D printer settings without have to fiddle with the interface – it's connected to Homeassistant so it has access to controls).
It's not just for that either. Alarms, timers, unit conversions, translations, calls from echo to echo in different rooms, weather at some location, purchases (and asking where are they)... you can even ask if some food can be given to your dog.
I will agree that it's infuriating when they don't work. And it doesn't seem to difficult to fix. There are commands I use frequently, chances are I am using them again. Asking to turn of the lights and having it play some random song is ridiculous.
What do dedicated hardware devices like Alexa add above and beyond that? They have a nicer speaker for playing music, but there's a whole ecosystem of bluetooth speakers you can use your phone with. They can control smart lightbulbs which I think phones don't have the right antenna for... but it feels like that could be solved by a $20 Chromecast-like dongle that your phone talks to over wifi. Is there anything else left to justify separate hardware, especially hardware that's likely sold break-even or at a loss?
The third party ecosystem never caught up and there is no killer app for Alexa other than those 4 use cases. The API (slots/intents) is limited and hard to create any useful interaction with it. My gut feeling is many divisions will be affected in Alexa.
Do they sell the devices at a profit?
Does usage of the devices lead to increased sales on Amazon.com? Are those sales that wouldn't have taken place on the app/website otherwise?
The devices listen for their wake word before ever transmitting data to the cloud. (This is also because the sheer amount of bandwidth needed for always-on would be un-economical even for Amazon).
No clear idea what that data is, though. There's at least a small chance it isn't benign.
As/when it's put on my institution's open repository I'll post a link. Might be a few weeks though.
Hell, don't even send the sound, just send a weekly report of events.
While absence is hard to prove, an intentional or unintentional data collection beyond what is stated in their policies is highly unlikely.
(I say "was" because they recently rolled part of it out as a Prime benefit a couple of weeks ago, but I can't figure out the exact difference between unlimited and what's included in Prime [and don't care enough to chase it down], but they are still offering a $9/mo unlimited offering, so there must be some difference.)
A massive limitation for some people, but it fits my usage.
It was perfect timing for me. Google just massively raised their prices for Youtube family so I was looking for alternatives.
You can only play in shuffle mode.
I'd imagine like any other new product, they're taking a risk and hoping the product takes off with higher adoption so they can earn more. The bet on Alexa always seemed to be that people wanted a hands-off, voice powered way to interact with the internet, and perhaps they could charge for skills (creating their own 'app store') at some point, or earn more on selling products on Amazon because people would enjoy the convenience of just asking their device to buy more detergent or whatever. Not sure I ever really got the premise here, because it was always quite easy to order stuff on my computer or phone.
Anyway, I don't work at Amazon so I'm not sure if I'm mistaken about what the idea was. I imagine only some people close to that division would really know.
Eventually people will say "Alexa buy my groceries"
Alexa will buy from the highest bidder
But for what it's worth, I think there's a conflict of interest here. No one is going to believe that Amazon won't prioritize Fresh or Whole Foods for these orders - even if they don't.
If I tell Alexa to order ketchup, who knows what brand I'll get or what size? It's possible I might end up with banana ketchup or even mayonnaise given how poorly Amazon's search functions work.
No reason why Amazon can't do something similar. They only need it to be "good enough" that people start getting used to not always needing to ask for it to list what is in the upcoming order.
"Alexa, put that on my shopping list" directs spending to Amazon in lieu of whatever the local alternative would have been.
That seems reasonable. Customers can order directly through the device ("Alexa, order some toilet paper"), that's low friction and lets Amazon rank options to their benefit. Plus regularly using Alexa keeps Amazon primed (no pun intended) in the customer's mind so next time they go online shopping they default to Amazon. Once you're using Alexa, there's an Apple effect encouraging adoption of other Amazon products through ease of use (Amazon Music, FireTV, Audible, etc). Amazon is also monetizing their products with ads, I'm sure that's part of the Alexa strategy as well.
Remains to be seen whether there is a "pull back" from smart devices that impacts the play. I was an early adopter of Alexa... at this point no one in my technical circle has proprietary "smart" home automation devices anymore, and the non-tech folks at best use Alexa to search in the Amazon app (mainly because they struggle with phone keyboards)
What are they using now, if you don't mind me asking?
This might get them in trouble eventually.
Yes. We have a few Alexa's and it's helpful to reorder commodities with your voice as you run out of that item (batteries, tape, printer paper, etc). I just add them to my cart and check the price later, but I like it because I'll likely forget to reorder some of those things if I don't do it right away.
Apple and Samsung own our pockets with their devices (and associated platforms), Amazon wants to own the spaces where our phone isn't always close by or easy to use (mostly home and car).
The Echo devices are way way too dumb. The user's Cloud account needs app-accessible storage.
Their actual purpose(s) will be emergent and are still being discovered.
Have they been funneling billions of RD into the software side, or are the units comically underpriced and have a BoM in the hundreds?
Then on top the software development is fairly novel - so they're probably spending quite a bit on development efforts related to the devices.
They're eating the costs for running the backend processing for all of these devices (they're sold as a one time fee, despite requiring services provided by Amazon servers).
Finally - they were promoting the ever loving shit out of the development tooling to app developers for a long time with a lot of seminars, development guides, free services on aws, etc.
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My strong guess is they wanted them work out the same way Kindles have - loss leaders that more than make up for it by securing digital goods purchases. But personally - I spend lots of money on amazon for books for my Kindle, and I spend basically nothing related to Alexa (there's literally just nothing I want to buy through it).
Lately my Alexa has started inserting promotional content into the standard voice responses (bs like "Alexa what time is it" returns the time, and then a "and it's a good time to watch the new Rings of Power tv show? should I tell you about it?").
They're going to go into the trash shortly at this rate. I'll switch to a self hosted replacement like mycroft or something.
Long-term, the hope is probably that the halo effect - "oh, I have Alexa, so I'll buy a Ring security system" and "Alexa, buy cat litter" sort of stuff - balances it out nicely.
Why would a 2022 article be citing a 2018 loss figure for a almost surely (if my house is any indication) fast-growing segment?
You could think of reporting on selective leaks like this as kind of a needling for Amazon to release more up-to-date info.
All of which is to say that a $5B loss is a very material number. They obviously thought it would be a big profit driver in the future, which it has not turned out to be yet.