Given that Alexa was launched publicly in 2014, perhaps it was responsible for the initial increase in popularity in 2015 by raising awareness of the name? Hav

Given that Alexa was launched publicly in 2014, perhaps it was responsible for the initial increase in popularity in 2015 by raising awareness of the name? Having been on the inside of the project and directly involved in picking the name / wake word (which happened earlier than 2014), there were multiple considerations involved. Particularly important was the functional requirement that the wake word chosen be able to support both high recognition rates and low false positives. We also did not want to have a "helper word" such as "hey" or "ok," as that would have required enforcing an unnatural speech pattern.