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Alexa was supposed to be a revenue stream for Amazon that never really materialized. As a developer of a now deprecated Alexa Skill, they constantly badgered m

Alexa was supposed to be a revenue stream for Amazon that never really materialized. As a developer of a now deprecated Alexa Skill, they constantly badgered me into monetizing it. All of those folks were trying to figure out how to have Alexa make money, and my interpretation of the layoffs is they never figured out how.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Maybe Alexa would have made money if the product wasn't so broken at understanding basic logic commands. How can you expect to sell this device knowing how bad and limited it is?
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  Millions of people use it despite it being “broken”. They just don’t know a good place to charge for the ongoing server costs. Hacker news keeps repeating that the product doesn’t work or is broken or whatever, but it’s a hit. Millions of people use it daily.
  - meiraleal 3y ago
    If it was a hit, a monthly subscription would solve the issue.
    - vineyardmike 3y ago
      Considering they’ve slowly started moving features behind a subscription already, keep watching because I’ll bet Alexa becomes a subscription for most features beyond timers and weather and controlling your first 10 smarthome devices. It’s just hard to charge for something that used to be free.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Millions of people actually use it? Or keep it as a paperweight who's sole job is to "Alexa turn off the lights" once a week? If it's the latter then you probably don't need to keep thousands of highly paid engineers since that's what Alexa could also do 10 years ago and what vehicle voice commands could do 15 years ago without internet connection and expensive data centers. Drops mic
    - vineyardmike 3y ago
      Well how do you define “uses it” because your paperweight story sure sounds like use to me. They probably don’t need all those engineers, but there’s a long-tail of features people use beyond weekly lights. Also, Alexa works better than any car control ever has, and at a fraction of the price. You obviously need internet connectivity for the majority of features people care about. Like controlling devices over the network, getting weather, streaming music, etc

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

Maybe Alexa would have made money if the product wasn't so broken at understanding basic logic commands. How can you expect to sell this device knowing how bad and limited it is?

vineyardmike 3y ago
Millions of people use it despite it being “broken”. They just don’t know a good place to charge for the ongoing server costs. Hacker news keeps repeating that the product doesn’t work or is broken or whatever, but it’s a hit. Millions of people use it daily.
- meiraleal 3y ago
  If it was a hit, a monthly subscription would solve the issue.
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    Considering they’ve slowly started moving features behind a subscription already, keep watching because I’ll bet Alexa becomes a subscription for most features beyond timers and weather and controlling your first 10 smarthome devices. It’s just hard to charge for something that used to be free.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Millions of people actually use it? Or keep it as a paperweight who's sole job is to "Alexa turn off the lights" once a week? If it's the latter then you probably don't need to keep thousands of highly paid engineers since that's what Alexa could also do 10 years ago and what vehicle voice commands could do 15 years ago without internet connection and expensive data centers. Drops mic
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    Well how do you define “uses it” because your paperweight story sure sounds like use to me. They probably don’t need all those engineers, but there’s a long-tail of features people use beyond weekly lights. Also, Alexa works better than any car control ever has, and at a fraction of the price. You obviously need internet connectivity for the majority of features people care about. Like controlling devices over the network, getting weather, streaming music, etc