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Alexa is a bit of a mystery. The plan apparently was: 1. Sell millions of devices at cost. Unrelenting sales on Echo devices 2. ??? 3. Profit And Step 2 was

Alexa is a bit of a mystery. The plan apparently was: 1. Sell millions of devices at cost. Unrelenting sales on Echo devices 2. ??? 3. Profit And Step 2 was never filled in. Maybe it was "if people can re-order paper towels by shouting at Alexa, we'll sell more paper towels". But that plan has its limits.

pishpash 4y ago
What's the mystery? It was to get in on the device platform game: walled garden, app store, ads, subscriptions, control, etc., same as Google, Apple, Meta, and even Microsoft and Sony.
shagie 4y ago
??? was "monetize skills" to which they could take a cut of it. The problem was that it was rather difficult to do for a while and the "here's a great ecosystem of games and tools" never materialized for echo devices. Part of that is that people really don't know how to to do voice interfaces well. Another part is that it has to run on AWS which has all the AWS sizing and billing problems that need to be solved by programmers (we're programmers - not SREs - and its really easy to rack up a too large bill on AWS). As such, in order to try to monetize a skill (which wasn't possible at first) you needed to commit to spending some AWS money to try to get it. Discovery of Alexa skills was poor at best. Free skills normally end up costing money (and not just time) for the programmer. And so, a possible revenue stream for Alexa has never realized.
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  > Part of that is that people really don't know how to to do voice interfaces well. Maybe that'll change now with ChatGPT. The problem I have with voice interfaces is you need something at the level of AGI to make it compelling. I could have an hours-long engaging voice-only conversation with a real person, but what the hell am I going to do with a dumb "smart" speaker that will be even a fraction as engaging as, say, a videogame? 99% of my smart speaker use cases are: Setting timers/alarms, querying the weather, turning on/off the lights, playing songs/podcasts/videos. For anything more interesting/interactive than that, you need more intelligence than existing systems actually have.
  - shagie 4y ago
    I believe that GPT is an enormous step forward for the voice interface. My favorite example is to give a csv of hourly weather data and it comes back with a human-esque interpretation of it. Not just the rules engine approach that you get from websites... Summarize the following weather forecast for tomorrow 12 am, 2° F, clear, 15 mph 1 am, 2° F, clear, 15 mph 2 am, 1° F, clear, 14 mph Tomorrow's forecast will be cold and clear with temperatures dropping from 2°F to 1°F and winds of around 15mph decreasing to 14mph. That's a small token example - give it the full 24h and its right on. Give it the proper data in a machine reasonable format and as it to make it into a human summary, and that's where its strength appears to be. The problem is that GPT would be too expensive for Amazon Alexa right now.
jimt1234 4y ago
I always thought Alexa was just a play to get more data, especially data about apps/services outside Amazon's ecosystem. Every time you tell Alexa to play a song (on Spotify) or turn up the temperature (on the smart thermostat), Amazon is analyzing that data. Maybe they'll start showing you ads for sweaters since they know you're always cold. LOL Also, the more you ask Alexa a question, the less you search on Google. And that's gotta be worth a bunch to Amazon. At least I thought it was.

pishpash 4y ago

What's the mystery? It was to get in on the device platform game: walled garden, app store, ads, subscriptions, control, etc., same as Google, Apple, Meta, and even Microsoft and Sony.

shagie 4y ago

??? was "monetize skills" to which they could take a cut of it. The problem was that it was rather difficult to do for a while and the "here's a great ecosystem of games and tools" never materialized for echo devices. Part of that is that people really don't know how to to do voice interfaces well. Another part is that it has to run on AWS which has all the AWS sizing and billing problems that need to be solved by programmers (we're programmers - not SREs - and its really easy to rack up a too large bill on AWS). As such, in order to try to monetize a skill (which wasn't possible at first) you needed to commit to spending some AWS money to try to get it. Discovery of Alexa skills was poor at best. Free skills normally end up costing money (and not just time) for the programmer. And so, a possible revenue stream for Alexa has never realized.

CydeWeys 4y ago
> Part of that is that people really don't know how to to do voice interfaces well. Maybe that'll change now with ChatGPT. The problem I have with voice interfaces is you need something at the level of AGI to make it compelling. I could have an hours-long engaging voice-only conversation with a real person, but what the hell am I going to do with a dumb "smart" speaker that will be even a fraction as engaging as, say, a videogame? 99% of my smart speaker use cases are: Setting timers/alarms, querying the weather, turning on/off the lights, playing songs/podcasts/videos. For anything more interesting/interactive than that, you need more intelligence than existing systems actually have.
- shagie 4y ago
  I believe that GPT is an enormous step forward for the voice interface. My favorite example is to give a csv of hourly weather data and it comes back with a human-esque interpretation of it. Not just the rules engine approach that you get from websites... Summarize the following weather forecast for tomorrow 12 am, 2° F, clear, 15 mph 1 am, 2° F, clear, 15 mph 2 am, 1° F, clear, 14 mph Tomorrow's forecast will be cold and clear with temperatures dropping from 2°F to 1°F and winds of around 15mph decreasing to 14mph. That's a small token example - give it the full 24h and its right on. Give it the proper data in a machine reasonable format and as it to make it into a human summary, and that's where its strength appears to be. The problem is that GPT would be too expensive for Amazon Alexa right now.

jimt1234 4y ago

I always thought Alexa was just a play to get more data, especially data about apps/services outside Amazon's ecosystem. Every time you tell Alexa to play a song (on Spotify) or turn up the temperature (on the smart thermostat), Amazon is analyzing that data. Maybe they'll start showing you ads for sweaters since they know you're always cold. LOL Also, the more you ask Alexa a question, the less you search on Google. And that's gotta be worth a bunch to Amazon. At least I thought it was.