4 ms·

> Google Assistant at 81.5 million users, Apple's Siri at 77.6 million, and Alexa at 71.6 million That's a lot of scale before figuring out there's no way to p

> Google Assistant at 81.5 million users, Apple's Siri at 77.6 million, and Alexa at 71.6 million That's a lot of scale before figuring out there's no way to profit!

raverbashing 4y ago
Yeah. And Apple and Google didn't need exclusive hardware for it I think it was an outburst of optimism? Or just finding new ways of selling to people
- miscaccount 4y ago
  i think its FOMO No one wants to lose market share because they are too late. Everyone keeps telling about android and Iphone and how blackberry, nokia and windows lost
- acdha 4y ago
  Voice assistants were really talked up for a while back then. Lots of future of computing claims, the big consulting companies were saying it’d be integral to business (the only way cubicle farms could get worse?), etc. For Amazon, that’s something of a threat: Apple, Google, and Microsoft would be well positioned as OS vendors and there is certainly room to imagine that putting Amazon at a disadvantage similar to what non-default search engines faced (remember A9?), not to mention the value of making it as easy as possible to order things. What I don’t understand is what all of these people were working on. The hardware isn’t bad but it’s not that kind of investment, and the software doesn’t seem to have improved in years (which seems to be true for the entire field - tons of people using them, mostly for the simple stuff Steve Jobs did in the first Siri demo a decade ago). I’m assuming there were projects which haven’t seen the light of day and quite likely never will, and that there’s probably a great inside story about strategic failures locked up behind NDAs.
  - throwaway_4ever 4y ago
    Notice a difference between the first Echo from 2015 and today’s? No? Well they still had us rewrite the entire OS, not once, but twice, and maintain all three OS’s across 10+ different devices… They did the same damn thing with the API to cloud servers. Every couple years, new deprecation and new way to do things. Promo driven development out the wazoo while ironically quoting “customer obsession” Zero ability to influence direction as IC. All top down initiatives from directors planned a year in advance.
    - raverbashing 4y ago
      Interesting. Sounds like Google syndrome. Why do you need to rewrite the OS 3 times for a speaker with mic?
      - throwaway_4ever 4y ago
        First OS was scrappy to MVP hardware and prove the market. But instead of iterating, they decided to fork Android so they could scale up a workforce who can only understand Java, not C++, to deliver features. Then they realized Android is too bulky for cheap chips, so back to custom C++, that just like the first is a trash fire for rando devs to deliver features fast under a whip.
    - acdha 4y ago
      Thanks for filling in those details - that makes sense for having so many people busy on things which aren’t customer-visible.
    - chimprich 4y ago
      > Notice a difference between the first Echo from 2015 and today’s? The later versions seem to be marginally less capable of understanding speech and far more annoying. "Alexa, play romantic music!" "Here's 100 top romantic death metal hits! By the way, did you know I can produce fart noises? Just ask, Alexa, blah blah blah" "Customer obsession" is a joke.

> Google Assistant at 81.5 million users, Apple's Siri at 77.6 million, and Alexa at 71.6 million That's a lot of scale before figuring out there's no way to profit!

raverbashing 4y ago

Yeah. And Apple and Google didn't need exclusive hardware for it I think it was an outburst of optimism? Or just finding new ways of selling to people

miscaccount 4y ago
i think its FOMO No one wants to lose market share because they are too late. Everyone keeps telling about android and Iphone and how blackberry, nokia and windows lost
acdha 4y ago
Voice assistants were really talked up for a while back then. Lots of future of computing claims, the big consulting companies were saying it’d be integral to business (the only way cubicle farms could get worse?), etc. For Amazon, that’s something of a threat: Apple, Google, and Microsoft would be well positioned as OS vendors and there is certainly room to imagine that putting Amazon at a disadvantage similar to what non-default search engines faced (remember A9?), not to mention the value of making it as easy as possible to order things. What I don’t understand is what all of these people were working on. The hardware isn’t bad but it’s not that kind of investment, and the software doesn’t seem to have improved in years (which seems to be true for the entire field - tons of people using them, mostly for the simple stuff Steve Jobs did in the first Siri demo a decade ago). I’m assuming there were projects which haven’t seen the light of day and quite likely never will, and that there’s probably a great inside story about strategic failures locked up behind NDAs.
- throwaway_4ever 4y ago
  Notice a difference between the first Echo from 2015 and today’s? No? Well they still had us rewrite the entire OS, not once, but twice, and maintain all three OS’s across 10+ different devices… They did the same damn thing with the API to cloud servers. Every couple years, new deprecation and new way to do things. Promo driven development out the wazoo while ironically quoting “customer obsession” Zero ability to influence direction as IC. All top down initiatives from directors planned a year in advance.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    Interesting. Sounds like Google syndrome. Why do you need to rewrite the OS 3 times for a speaker with mic?
    - throwaway_4ever 4y ago
      First OS was scrappy to MVP hardware and prove the market. But instead of iterating, they decided to fork Android so they could scale up a workforce who can only understand Java, not C++, to deliver features. Then they realized Android is too bulky for cheap chips, so back to custom C++, that just like the first is a trash fire for rando devs to deliver features fast under a whip.
  - acdha 4y ago
    Thanks for filling in those details - that makes sense for having so many people busy on things which aren’t customer-visible.
  - chimprich 4y ago
    > Notice a difference between the first Echo from 2015 and today’s? The later versions seem to be marginally less capable of understanding speech and far more annoying. "Alexa, play romantic music!" "Here's 100 top romantic death metal hits! By the way, did you know I can produce fart noises? Just ask, Alexa, blah blah blah" "Customer obsession" is a joke.