19 ms·

Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling

132 points by ziszis 9y ago

fredley 9y ago
> Meanwhile, users of that newest Echo, the Echo Show, which has the screen and video feature, will get added services, it seems. The one that has jumped out at me first is called “Drop In” — which lets you make a call to someone without them even answering the phone first. I wonder if this is opt-in or opt-out. Honestly if it's opt-out I think Amazon could have a huge backlash on its hands. Not from privacy-minded folks, but from ordinary people who suddenly have people listening to them/viewing them when they don't expect (unless Amazon really makes an effort to make that the expectation).
- bshimmin 9y ago
  The very next paragraph: Alas, this is not being positioned as something mildly intrusive, nor as a creepy big brother-style service (which is the worst case scenario and one that Amazon has been taking pains to avoid in all of its Echo and Alexa products). Rather, Amazon emphasizes that it is opt-in, and a way to communicate with only the very closest members of your family.
  - skummetmaelk 9y ago
    Until the first zero day is discovered.
  - FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
    Until your boss requires it for sick days.
- eclipxe 9y ago
  Clearly opt-in, as the next paragraph states
AlexandrB 9y ago
This is "free" as in Amazon is free to record your calls and messages and use them either as training data for AI or targeting data for advertising.
- xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
  Huh? Skype is free. Google Hangouts is free. Google voice is free. Do you have a facebook account? LinkedIn? Gmail? All of your points apply there as well. How is this controversial?
  - gambiting 9y ago
    Over here(UK) you can get a sim card from any operator for free, and call people on the same network for free - yet I don't expect my telephone conversations to be recorded and analysed by my mobile network. Why is it different here?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- devoply 9y ago
  Yeah sounds like a bad idea.
- owlninja 9y ago
  Where does it say this?
  - EchoUser 9y ago
    Section 1.3 of the Alexa Terms of Use: "...to provide and improve our services...". 1.3 Alexa Interactions. You control Alexa with your voice. Alexa streams audio to the cloud when you interact with Alexa. Alexa processes and retains your Alexa Interactions, such as your voice inputs, music playlists and your Alexa to-do and shopping lists, in the cloud to provide and improve our services. Learn more about these voice services including how to delete voice recordings associated with your account. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201809740 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... I personally take "improve" in this context to mean: iteratively analyze and change our services to maximize profits
accountyaccount 9y ago
This effectively makes the Echo Show a circa-1995 video phone for remote grandparenting.
- intopieces 9y ago
  I was only 8 in 1995, can you link me to a such a device? I'd like to compare.
  - accountyaccount 9y ago
    Sure, I was thinking of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULX-omgUzIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULX-omgUzIc But in general the product has been around in some (generally expensive) form since the '70s.
technofiend 9y ago
Yet another missed opportunity for Google who purchased Grandcentral all those years ago. They already have call metrics for android devices. They could have had it for all the folks who would have dropped their PSTN lines for a Google Voice appliance as well as call history for anyone they called. Thought they wanted that kind of information but apparently not that much. Must be low value relative to web searches? Would love to see a hack for Google home / Amazon echo that just turns them into dumb SIP devices. :-)
- searchfaster 9y ago
  Plenty of 3rd party devices support Google voice though.. I have been using a ooba (not sure about the name) for 4 years now as my home phone.
  - libria 9y ago
    *Ooma likely, e.g. Ooma Telo. Didn't know GV integrated w/ it though, cool.
  - technofiend 9y ago
    Oh yeah there are plenty of hacks to make it work, but Google worked to remove native SIP support from their service, which was originally there in GC. It's too bad, because it was handy as hell.
ethn 9y ago
"If they're not selling something to you, they're selling you" -Anonymous
- teej 9y ago
  Amazon is literally an online store. A vast majority of their sales comes from selling things to you. Including the damn Echo this service runs on.
- bearcobra 9y ago
  Well they are selling you the device...
  - ethn 9y ago
    Services cost money, that's why all phones don't offer free calling. The 'free' calls will eat away at the margins. I don't understand why this quote is controversial. It's quite obvious that they want the free data to at least train their machine learning algorithms, if not to also 'provide targeted ads'.
wan23 9y ago
This seems like the biggest feature these devices have been missing. Some use cases off the top of my head: * Alexa, call my phone (because I can't find it) * Alexa, call for Chinese food (okay everyone call out what you want) * Alexa, send a message to my son -- "I've fallen and I can't get up"
- djhworld 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of applications ("skills") out there already that do the first one in your list. Third idea is really interesting though, maybe calling the emergency services could be good in that situation too
  - mynameislegion1 9y ago
    Yes indeed its interesting
  - smacktoward 9y ago
    #3 turns out to be complicated to do in practice, because the API Alexa exposes to allow third-party "skills" to handle voice commands requires them to be phrased in a pretty specific format that includes the name of the skill (see https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/supported-phrases-to-begin-a-conversation https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-sk...). Which is a big ask for a user in a high-stress emergency situation, especially if the skill is one they aren't going to have been routinely interacting with before then. (And a 911 type application is sort of the definition of an app the user will not be routinely interacting with.) I tinkered a little bit with this idea when the Echo Dot came out, but these limitations more or less killed my interest in exploring the concept further.
- scosman 9y ago
  Or as an intercom: * Alexa, call the living room: hey everybody, dinner's getting cold!
  - danielhooper 9y ago
chayesfss 9y ago
Call/message anyone with the alexa call app? Won't get out of the gate
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- komali2 9y ago
  Care to expand?
- jbigelow76 9y ago
  I think Android users would be more open to adopting a new call/message app. Apple users however are pretty well anchored to the iMessage/FaceTime combo.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    Besides the hordes of Apple users that seem to use WhatsApp/FBM/Signal etc without any problems? If anything Android might be worse off, if it's like Prime Video the app won't be available on the Google Play Store and you'll have to install Amazon Underground or w/e they call their app store now manually then download Amazon Prime Video for your device.
    - jbigelow76 9y ago
      Besides the hordes of Apple users that seem to use WhatsApp/FBM/Signal etc without any problems? All three of the examples you laid out have specific use cases that propelled their popularity WhatsApp: free SMS which was a bigger deal, especially internationally when it hit the scene. The Echo Show is US only for now. FB Messenger: access to the walled garden of people that live in FB Signal: secure private communications. I'm not saying that Apple users won't use other message mediums if there is a compelling reason but I am saying for Apple users that are in predominately Apple-centric family/social circles the Echo messaging/video chat app doesn't offer meaningful differentiation from iMessage/FaceTime.
asciimo 9y ago
I wonder who's providing their telephony backend. There was some speculation that Twilio was powering Amazon Connect. Twilio's Jeff Lawson was an original AWS product manager...
- Eridrus 9y ago
  Does this actually make real telephone calls? I got the impression that this only connected the Echo products and app.
  - blastofpast 9y ago
    According to the article, it's not real telephone calls, yet.
- devilsenigma 9y ago
  I'm guessing its some component of their AWS Chime product https://chime.aws/ https://chime.aws/
gdw2 9y ago
If I call a friend, what number shows up on their end? Does it have its own phone number or can it use your cell number?
- blastofpast 9y ago
  Title is probably misleading many people. This new feature does not do standard calls to phones. From what I can tell, it's more of an "in-amazon-network" voice chat, between amazon apps/devices.
guyzero 9y ago
Announcing an unreleased major feature the week before Google I/O? What a surprise.
kylec 9y ago
I wish we could just get some standardization and federation across VoIP providers. I would love to be able to use whatever device I want to call someone else, who can use whatever device they want to answer. Mac, PC, iOS, Android, Alexa - it should all just work together.
- sceew 9y ago
  Apple is very hostile about this, especially when it comes to iMessage.
CodeSheikh 9y ago
...except state monarchies with telecom monopolies banning Whatsapp, Skype, Facetime...
FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
> The one that has jumped out at me first is called “Drop In” — which lets you make a call to someone without them even answering the phone first. I wish that the product person who pushed this as an "innovative" idea lives a short, brutish, and painful life where he/she dies alone. EDIT: That's too mean spirited. If you want to peer in on your elderly parents, webcams are a better idea because you'll put them in a position that captures a wide angle or buy a 360 degree camera as opposed to this which only seems to pick up video in the direction it's facing. What person would ever want this "feature"? We have webcams for people who don't mind exhibiting themselves. People overwhelmingly prefer to text others rather than talk over the phone or facetime when given the chance. Even when you visit someone in person, you don't drop in, unannounced like a peeping tom. You knock on the door to announce your appearance, exactly analogous to ringing the telephone before listening in and watching. I don't like it because the world's largest retailer has the marketing and advertising muscle to normalize this behavior by preying upon our fears, our irrational behavior, and our cognitive biases. Look at the social stigma one faces if you don't have a facebook account and you're under 35. Not just that, but you will get harassed by border and customs agents if they ask for your social media account and you don't have one, setting off red flags. In the near future, I can see this feature becoming a requirement for remote workers with insecure managers. EDIT: This will definitely become a feature on sites like Upwork so that buyers can make sure developers are billing them the correct hours, even though the prices are dirt cheap already.
- rkho 9y ago
  > I wish that the product person who pushed this as an "innovative" idea lives a short, brutish, and painful life where he/she dies alone. Is this necessary?
  - FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
    The people responsible for this knew exactly what they are doing. They are putting a vice grip on society's notion of what privacy is, crushing it into an ever smaller idea. It's not for the benefit of people, it's for their own narrow self-interest and profit. If this were bi-directional, that along with a loss of privacy came blanket transparency into how they're using the data they record, shared their data sets and open sourced their algorithms, I may not feel comfortable with it, but I wouldn't feel this existential dread that my greatest value comes from being a data point.
dtien 9y ago
Apple (and Google) really dropped the ball on the connected Home 'smartbox' that Amazon popularized with Alexa. We received one as a gift this past Christmas, and I'm now a full believer in this tech after being a very big skeptic during the first couple years of Alexa's existence. Add to the fact, that we primarily use it as a smart connected radio, and the benefits are still beyond clear to me. Essentially, you've now opened up the possibility of exposing a lot of the latest tech to a new demographic of people that probably were 'too old' to 'get it', or not tech savvy enough to use it. The combination of a voice interface (not perfect, but improving) with access to all the latest web services spanning music, telephony, email, todo lists, home automation, etc is huge. I can now actually envision my parents, or even grandparents using services like Spotify, Podcasts, Connected Calendars, VOIP, and any number of things that the tech savvy take for granted through their phones or other devices. Circling back to my first statement about Apple; the quintessential consumer oriented tech company. The company that's supposed to make all things nasty and complicated into things that are simple and accessible. How did Apple who already had Apple TV (home box), Siri (voice interface), Itunes (music and app ecosystem), Icloud( ugh.. but still integrated personal mgmt) and FaceTime (VOIP) not come up with this sooner. Or at least, once they saw Alexa gaining popularity not just bundle up their services and release it. Apple typically is late to the party with a more refined product, but Amazon is executing at an impressive rate these days and it's getting harder to see how Apple can close the gap.
- gordon_freeman 9y ago
  Apple still has a huge advantage with their iOS app ecosystem. They can introduce a hardware and add an SDK to iOS that allows their developers to create apps that seamlessly work on that hardware. But they need to come up with the hardware fast because Amazon will race far ahead otherwise.
  - ianai 9y ago
    Let's not forget their huge cash on hand. Apple could purchase its way into any market and technology at this point.
JamesUtah07 9y ago
> You can call or message any contact who also has the free Alexa App, an Echo, Echo Dot, or Echo Show and has enabled Alexa calling and messaging. Just to be clear for others that can't/didn't read the full article, you can't make full calls to anyone, they have to have at minimum the amazon alexa app.
asafira 9y ago
Can you make phone calls with a Google Home yet? If not, it seems like an oversight. (Google has lots of VOIP infrastructure, right? They have Google Voice, which seems to have risen from the dead over the past 6ish months...)
pm24601 9y ago
Is it just me - or does anyone sympathize with every woman/girl with the name Alexa or Alexandra?

132 points by ziszis 9y ago

> Meanwhile, users of that newest Echo, the Echo Show, which has the screen and video feature, will get added services, it seems. The one that has jumped out at me first is called “Drop In” — which lets you make a call to someone without them even answering the phone first. I wonder if this is opt-in or opt-out. Honestly if it's opt-out I think Amazon could have a huge backlash on its hands. Not from privacy-minded folks, but from ordinary people who suddenly have people listening to them/viewing them when they don't expect (unless Amazon really makes an effort to make that the expectation).

bshimmin 9y ago
The very next paragraph: Alas, this is not being positioned as something mildly intrusive, nor as a creepy big brother-style service (which is the worst case scenario and one that Amazon has been taking pains to avoid in all of its Echo and Alexa products). Rather, Amazon emphasizes that it is opt-in, and a way to communicate with only the very closest members of your family.
- skummetmaelk 9y ago
  Until the first zero day is discovered.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
  Until your boss requires it for sick days.
eclipxe 9y ago
Clearly opt-in, as the next paragraph states

AlexandrB 9y ago

This is "free" as in Amazon is free to record your calls and messages and use them either as training data for AI or targeting data for advertising.

xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
Huh? Skype is free. Google Hangouts is free. Google voice is free. Do you have a facebook account? LinkedIn? Gmail? All of your points apply there as well. How is this controversial?
- gambiting 9y ago
  Over here(UK) you can get a sim card from any operator for free, and call people on the same network for free - yet I don't expect my telephone conversations to be recorded and analysed by my mobile network. Why is it different here?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
devoply 9y ago
Yeah sounds like a bad idea.
owlninja 9y ago
Where does it say this?
- EchoUser 9y ago
  Section 1.3 of the Alexa Terms of Use: "...to provide and improve our services...". 1.3 Alexa Interactions. You control Alexa with your voice. Alexa streams audio to the cloud when you interact with Alexa. Alexa processes and retains your Alexa Interactions, such as your voice inputs, music playlists and your Alexa to-do and shopping lists, in the cloud to provide and improve our services. Learn more about these voice services including how to delete voice recordings associated with your account. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201809740 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... I personally take "improve" in this context to mean: iteratively analyze and change our services to maximize profits

accountyaccount 9y ago

This effectively makes the Echo Show a circa-1995 video phone for remote grandparenting.

intopieces 9y ago
I was only 8 in 1995, can you link me to a such a device? I'd like to compare.
- accountyaccount 9y ago
  Sure, I was thinking of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULX-omgUzIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULX-omgUzIc But in general the product has been around in some (generally expensive) form since the '70s.

technofiend 9y ago

Yet another missed opportunity for Google who purchased Grandcentral all those years ago. They already have call metrics for android devices. They could have had it for all the folks who would have dropped their PSTN lines for a Google Voice appliance as well as call history for anyone they called. Thought they wanted that kind of information but apparently not that much. Must be low value relative to web searches? Would love to see a hack for Google home / Amazon echo that just turns them into dumb SIP devices. :-)

searchfaster 9y ago
Plenty of 3rd party devices support Google voice though.. I have been using a ooba (not sure about the name) for 4 years now as my home phone.
- libria 9y ago
  *Ooma likely, e.g. Ooma Telo. Didn't know GV integrated w/ it though, cool.
- technofiend 9y ago
  Oh yeah there are plenty of hacks to make it work, but Google worked to remove native SIP support from their service, which was originally there in GC. It's too bad, because it was handy as hell.

ethn 9y ago

"If they're not selling something to you, they're selling you" -Anonymous

teej 9y ago
Amazon is literally an online store. A vast majority of their sales comes from selling things to you. Including the damn Echo this service runs on.
bearcobra 9y ago
Well they are selling you the device...
- ethn 9y ago
  Services cost money, that's why all phones don't offer free calling. The 'free' calls will eat away at the margins. I don't understand why this quote is controversial. It's quite obvious that they want the free data to at least train their machine learning algorithms, if not to also 'provide targeted ads'.

wan23 9y ago

This seems like the biggest feature these devices have been missing. Some use cases off the top of my head: * Alexa, call my phone (because I can't find it) * Alexa, call for Chinese food (okay everyone call out what you want) * Alexa, send a message to my son -- "I've fallen and I can't get up"

djhworld 9y ago
I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of applications ("skills") out there already that do the first one in your list. Third idea is really interesting though, maybe calling the emergency services could be good in that situation too
- mynameislegion1 9y ago
  Yes indeed its interesting
- smacktoward 9y ago
  #3 turns out to be complicated to do in practice, because the API Alexa exposes to allow third-party "skills" to handle voice commands requires them to be phrased in a pretty specific format that includes the name of the skill (see https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/supported-phrases-to-begin-a-conversation https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-sk...). Which is a big ask for a user in a high-stress emergency situation, especially if the skill is one they aren't going to have been routinely interacting with before then. (And a 911 type application is sort of the definition of an app the user will not be routinely interacting with.) I tinkered a little bit with this idea when the Echo Dot came out, but these limitations more or less killed my interest in exploring the concept further.
scosman 9y ago
Or as an intercom: * Alexa, call the living room: hey everybody, dinner's getting cold!
- danielhooper 9y ago

chayesfss 9y ago

Call/message anyone with the alexa call app? Won't get out of the gate

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
komali2 9y ago
Care to expand?
jbigelow76 9y ago
I think Android users would be more open to adopting a new call/message app. Apple users however are pretty well anchored to the iMessage/FaceTime combo.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Besides the hordes of Apple users that seem to use WhatsApp/FBM/Signal etc without any problems? If anything Android might be worse off, if it's like Prime Video the app won't be available on the Google Play Store and you'll have to install Amazon Underground or w/e they call their app store now manually then download Amazon Prime Video for your device.
  - jbigelow76 9y ago
    Besides the hordes of Apple users that seem to use WhatsApp/FBM/Signal etc without any problems? All three of the examples you laid out have specific use cases that propelled their popularity WhatsApp: free SMS which was a bigger deal, especially internationally when it hit the scene. The Echo Show is US only for now. FB Messenger: access to the walled garden of people that live in FB Signal: secure private communications. I'm not saying that Apple users won't use other message mediums if there is a compelling reason but I am saying for Apple users that are in predominately Apple-centric family/social circles the Echo messaging/video chat app doesn't offer meaningful differentiation from iMessage/FaceTime.

asciimo 9y ago

I wonder who's providing their telephony backend. There was some speculation that Twilio was powering Amazon Connect. Twilio's Jeff Lawson was an original AWS product manager...

Eridrus 9y ago
Does this actually make real telephone calls? I got the impression that this only connected the Echo products and app.
- blastofpast 9y ago
  According to the article, it's not real telephone calls, yet.
devilsenigma 9y ago
I'm guessing its some component of their AWS Chime product https://chime.aws/ https://chime.aws/

gdw2 9y ago

If I call a friend, what number shows up on their end? Does it have its own phone number or can it use your cell number?

blastofpast 9y ago
Title is probably misleading many people. This new feature does not do standard calls to phones. From what I can tell, it's more of an "in-amazon-network" voice chat, between amazon apps/devices.

guyzero 9y ago

Announcing an unreleased major feature the week before Google I/O? What a surprise.

kylec 9y ago

I wish we could just get some standardization and federation across VoIP providers. I would love to be able to use whatever device I want to call someone else, who can use whatever device they want to answer. Mac, PC, iOS, Android, Alexa - it should all just work together.

sceew 9y ago
Apple is very hostile about this, especially when it comes to iMessage.

CodeSheikh 9y ago

...except state monarchies with telecom monopolies banning Whatsapp, Skype, Facetime...

FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago

> The one that has jumped out at me first is called “Drop In” — which lets you make a call to someone without them even answering the phone first. I wish that the product person who pushed this as an "innovative" idea lives a short, brutish, and painful life where he/she dies alone. EDIT: That's too mean spirited. If you want to peer in on your elderly parents, webcams are a better idea because you'll put them in a position that captures a wide angle or buy a 360 degree camera as opposed to this which only seems to pick up video in the direction it's facing. What person would ever want this "feature"? We have webcams for people who don't mind exhibiting themselves. People overwhelmingly prefer to text others rather than talk over the phone or facetime when given the chance. Even when you visit someone in person, you don't drop in, unannounced like a peeping tom. You knock on the door to announce your appearance, exactly analogous to ringing the telephone before listening in and watching. I don't like it because the world's largest retailer has the marketing and advertising muscle to normalize this behavior by preying upon our fears, our irrational behavior, and our cognitive biases. Look at the social stigma one faces if you don't have a facebook account and you're under 35. Not just that, but you will get harassed by border and customs agents if they ask for your social media account and you don't have one, setting off red flags. In the near future, I can see this feature becoming a requirement for remote workers with insecure managers. EDIT: This will definitely become a feature on sites like Upwork so that buyers can make sure developers are billing them the correct hours, even though the prices are dirt cheap already.

rkho 9y ago
> I wish that the product person who pushed this as an "innovative" idea lives a short, brutish, and painful life where he/she dies alone. Is this necessary?
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
  The people responsible for this knew exactly what they are doing. They are putting a vice grip on society's notion of what privacy is, crushing it into an ever smaller idea. It's not for the benefit of people, it's for their own narrow self-interest and profit. If this were bi-directional, that along with a loss of privacy came blanket transparency into how they're using the data they record, shared their data sets and open sourced their algorithms, I may not feel comfortable with it, but I wouldn't feel this existential dread that my greatest value comes from being a data point.

dtien 9y ago

Apple (and Google) really dropped the ball on the connected Home 'smartbox' that Amazon popularized with Alexa. We received one as a gift this past Christmas, and I'm now a full believer in this tech after being a very big skeptic during the first couple years of Alexa's existence. Add to the fact, that we primarily use it as a smart connected radio, and the benefits are still beyond clear to me. Essentially, you've now opened up the possibility of exposing a lot of the latest tech to a new demographic of people that probably were 'too old' to 'get it', or not tech savvy enough to use it. The combination of a voice interface (not perfect, but improving) with access to all the latest web services spanning music, telephony, email, todo lists, home automation, etc is huge. I can now actually envision my parents, or even grandparents using services like Spotify, Podcasts, Connected Calendars, VOIP, and any number of things that the tech savvy take for granted through their phones or other devices. Circling back to my first statement about Apple; the quintessential consumer oriented tech company. The company that's supposed to make all things nasty and complicated into things that are simple and accessible. How did Apple who already had Apple TV (home box), Siri (voice interface), Itunes (music and app ecosystem), Icloud( ugh.. but still integrated personal mgmt) and FaceTime (VOIP) not come up with this sooner. Or at least, once they saw Alexa gaining popularity not just bundle up their services and release it. Apple typically is late to the party with a more refined product, but Amazon is executing at an impressive rate these days and it's getting harder to see how Apple can close the gap.

gordon_freeman 9y ago
Apple still has a huge advantage with their iOS app ecosystem. They can introduce a hardware and add an SDK to iOS that allows their developers to create apps that seamlessly work on that hardware. But they need to come up with the hardware fast because Amazon will race far ahead otherwise.
- ianai 9y ago
  Let's not forget their huge cash on hand. Apple could purchase its way into any market and technology at this point.

JamesUtah07 9y ago

> You can call or message any contact who also has the free Alexa App, an Echo, Echo Dot, or Echo Show and has enabled Alexa calling and messaging. Just to be clear for others that can't/didn't read the full article, you can't make full calls to anyone, they have to have at minimum the amazon alexa app.

asafira 9y ago

Can you make phone calls with a Google Home yet? If not, it seems like an oversight. (Google has lots of VOIP infrastructure, right? They have Google Voice, which seems to have risen from the dead over the past 6ish months...)

pm24601 9y ago

Is it just me - or does anyone sympathize with every woman/girl with the name Alexa or Alexandra?