The failure of Amazon's Alexa shows Microsoft was right to kill Cortana | Hacker News Reader

The failure of Amazon's Alexa shows Microsoft was right to kill Cortana

windowscentral.com

35 pointsthunderbong29 comments

Not impressed by the article. The heading raised an instant question .. when did Microsoft kill Cortana? I tried figuring that from the article but it seems to be pointing at tea leaves. The article links to a history of Cortana article but that does not indicate it is dead by any means.

Edit .. I googled and seems to see stories about Microsoft removing Cortana mobile apps on Android and iOS, and some removal of features. I call this focusing. I don't see evidence that the backend infra or Windows-level support is going away.

The last paragraph seems a bit out of place given ChatGPT's thorough understanding of nuance.

It is still very much there in windows, but that's mostly a search engine now.

> "when did Microsoft kill Cortana"

As a voice assistant? Some time around Windows 11 and the Xbox Series S/X.

They're still going to keep it around as a knowledge graph and engine though, it seems like.

As long as 'hey google, turn up the volume' continues to work while I'm in the shower I'm good. This is my #1 most appreciated feature of living in the future. Thousand dollar computer phone, 500 dollar wireless waterproof speaker just to play worse that 1980 CD quality digitally compressed and over EQ'd music, but at least I don't drip water all over the floor going to turn it up.

Cortana might be dead, but the Windows 11 Control Panel still won't let me uninstall it.

I think that’s because they merged start menu and web search functionality into the app called Cortana a so even if the assistant portion is dead the same app still powers the start menu regardless.

Me: OK WebEx, start meeting

WebEx: Thankyou for saying that!

Great, your speech recognition is so bad it can’t recognise me saying the single most common phrase you ever receive but you’ve got a jokey response to something I didn’t say.

If this is the future I’m gonna be tearing up railroad lines.

In general, I find myself using virtual assistants only for simple tasks I'd rather not fiddle with dials for -- timers, reminders. The problem is, embedding virtual assistant support is another API, and there are countless others that need to be maintained as well, so it becomes just a useless kludge.

I think having some sort of URI scheme would be nicer, for a more Unixy approach to things. For example, "timer/start-timer/3:00" and "settings/bluetooth?action=toggle"; but also "com.tumblr.tumblrapp/notifications" etc. That way you may be able to implement inter-app and OS APIs in a way that also exposes them automatically to being done by a user, and some on-device neural network would transform a general query into such a URI. You'd have to have some checks that actions aren't irreversible, of course. It would also help greatly neural net returned a confidence rating so the OS knows whether to do an action automatically, ask for clarity, show a list of what it thinks could help, etc.

It would require a gargantuan amount of effort, unfortunately, so the current system of manually-adding features is probably here to stay for a good while.

Where is the money in all that?

Amazon learned about your timer settings, where is the cash?

Did Alexa fail? My parents have those little pod things all over the place. To be fair, they mostly use them to set kitchen timers and turn on/off the christmas tree, but still.

But they dont order stuff over them. So Alexa failed to deliver what was planned.

I haven't tried using Alexa to order anything but in my mind the problem here is the Amazon market itself. You can't guarantee that you will get the lowest price and that the seller is "reputable".

And consider things you want to reorder like dish soap or some other consumable (diet coke maybe). Do I get something unexpected? Or do you have to fill your Amazon Pantry order.

Some people use Alexa to create shared shopping lists or a shopping list so. I think there could be some innovation there where amazon post-processes it for deals etc... not sure if they do that.

Also the Amazon website itself is just a mess. Customer support is hard to find. They really have a ux problem.

Customer support being hard to find is a feature, not a big as far as Amazon is concerned.

It gatekeeps phone support really hard.

And what good it does for Amazon to learn how your folks set kitchen timers?

Where is the money in that?

I'm assuming it's in all the PII they're harvesting.

Alexa is not a failure. However it is over expanded under a corporate setting to the point of a massive layoff. But it is not a failed product.

Our Alexa devices completely ignore my partner 6 times in 7, but work for me consistently.

I keep them around simply because I find this hilarious

it takes more effort to talk than type.

In the car it's better to use voice, but the voice assistant is so bad that I don't want that kind of frustration in any other part of my life.

Not when I'm walking down the stairs and want to start a timer or something.

Is “Ok, Google” or Siri better? More successful? If you think so - please explain.

Siri and Google are pretty popular and successful, so this take is wrong, it's coming from "windowscentral" so i'm not surprised

Success to whom?

Indeed. It appears Amazon is the first to say “Is the money we’re spending on this actually bringing in revenue?”. Products can be hugely successful until you ask that question.

It links in with prime music, video and audio books.

I doubt my gf would have a prime subscription if she couldn't play music. It's further debatable if she would use Amazon as often as she does without prime.

Certainly not to WindowsCentral

Siri is successful at replying “sorry, I am having trouble…”

Surely not in understanding European Portuguese.

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