When I got my first echo device, it was exciting and cutting edge. Voice control was new and it worked reasonably well. A general trend with products like this

When I got my first echo device, it was exciting and cutting edge. Voice control was new and it worked reasonably well. A general trend with products like this is that they improve over time, and so I was happy to be along for the ride. But it never happened. Alexa never got smarter. It still misunderstands basic stuff. You still have to use specific words for specific actions or it gets confused. You still have to maintain silence for a couple of seconds before speaking to anybody else after a command otherwise it will go into a loop of "I don't know that". It still won't play the exact song I want to. The development experience is also extremely limited and stunted. You cannot run any code on the device, period. You can only define lambda functions that are triggered by voice. The function does not have access to anything from the device, only the spoken words. You want to incorporate the temperature of the room using the built in sensor? No can do. You want to know the state of a bulb or a switch? Not possible. You want to do things on a schedule? Nope, it has to always be in response to a command. So I'm not surprised they are losing money. They dropped the ball hard. They built an amazing thing and let it stagnate. They've steadily improved the hardware, but totally ignored the software. And software is what's magical about this. A robotic person who talks to you! This has to be pure software play. Hardware is secondary.