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This is the core tension at the heart of Alexa that the author didn't address at all. It's not that Alexa is a bad product or that it wasn't cutting-edge, it's

This is the core tension at the heart of Alexa that the author didn't address at all. It's not that Alexa is a bad product or that it wasn't cutting-edge, it's that it contributed very little to Amazon's other lines of businesses to justify the investment. "Shopping with your voice" never took off despite many attempts. The contribution towards subscription services like Audible and Amazon Music was not substantial enough to warrant the massive R&D investment. The business unit never found any other sources of convincing revenue. Every other decision is downstream from that unresolved tension.

ansible 2y ago
Huh, interesting. I've never used our Alexa for shopping. If I said something like "Alexa, buy more filters", even being very clever and looking at my order history, it would still get something wrong. And then I'd need to use another device to actually make the order. While it seems to work fine on the speech recognition part, in that Alexa understands the words I say, it never seemed good enough to actually navigate a task like ordering the right kind of filter. I knew there was some behind-the-scenes scripting going on, but I didn't realize just how much... We mostly use our Alexa for kitchen timers, reminders, and video calls with family. Occasionally for playing music too. No, I don't want to subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited.
malfist 2y ago
I used Alexa for audible a few times and it was a nightmare. It wouldn't start where I stopped listening on my phone, and then when I stopped listening with the alexa it wouldn't record the correct timeslot back to my phone. So I either had to _only_ listen with alexa, or listen with everything else on my phone. Guess which I picked?
ssl-3 2y ago
Shopping for household goods on Amazon is a minefield to begin with. Prices vary wildly from day to day, even on identical (same ASIN) products. And descriptions tend to be vague (is it Mediterranean oregano, or is it Mexican oregano? They're not the same plant, but it doesn't fucking say!). Per-unit pricing is often broken (is it 24 units of single cans, or is it 4 units of 6 cans each?). Even when sitting in front of a real computer, it often takes fair amount of effort to find a product that represents the kind of value at the moment that I'm interested in. Comparative shopping with this mess on the back end doesn't work with the current state of Alexa. There's details that are important to me, as a consumer, that can't be boiled down to a price and an 8-word summary. If the back-end data weren't broken, buying with Alexa could be made to work if it could get a grasp (using ML or some other buzzword) of how a buyer's proclivities tended to be shaped. For instance, some people want the best per-volume price, and some others want the highest quality at any expense, with a huge range in between. I myself don't have a ton of room for bulk buying, so I often aim for a medium volume of moderate-high quality, tempered by a price that is low today. But, again: The back-end data is broken, and Alexa is too stupid to make what I think are good decisions. When I can't trust the talking computer on my countertop to make good decisions for me, and if my hands are already full, I don't have time to have a drawn-out conversation with a bot, so I won't ever actually buy stuff that way. It's not functionally better than Amazon's abortive Dash Buttons[0] from 8-ish years ago, which were also untrustworthy for many of the same (or related) reasons. --- But if I'm cooking in the kitchen and I notice that I'm low on oregano, I do have time to say "Alexa, add oregano to my cart." And I'll also invariably make time to interrupt its misguided response with a quick "Alexa, shut the fuck up" once it starts prattling on about the useless summary from the bad back-end data (GIGO), so I can get back to doing what I'm doing. This is important to mention because if I weren't already busy with my hands, I wouldn't bother with using Alexa at all for this task. Eventually, I'll find myself in front of a real computer again and I'll go through and true up the things I've used Alexa to put in my cart, so they match my actual expectations, and actually buy some things. And while this is useful to me, it's obviously pretty far removed from the target goal of the system. And it can't ever get better until they fix their data. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Dash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Dash
ryandrake 2y ago
> "Shopping with your voice" never took off despite many attempts. We're seeing this more and more in tech: Company comes out with a feature that few people want. It doesn't gain adoption. They make many attempts to cajole and nudge users to use the feature. Users don't use the feature. They make more buttons and flows trigger the feature. Users ignore them. They start tricking users into using the feature, with dark patterns and misleading buttons. Users deliberately learn and avoid these. Exasperated, they declare "Why, oh why, won't users just use this feature!? They're just uninformed or don't know what's good for them!" Whatever happened to starting with what the user actually wants and then working backwards from that to the actual feature? More and more, companies are more interested in serving their own metrics than serving their users.
- mason55 2y ago
  Lots of companies still work like you said. With a company like Amazon, though, you have two things at play. The first is that it takes a massive amount of dollars to make an impact on revenue. You're just not going to move the needle by selling a new product or something. It's a mature business and to meaningfully increase your revenues you need to alter people's current behavior so they spend more. But, the second thing, is that if you manage to increase revenue by a percentage point, that is a huge amount of money, and that potential payoff can justify a huge investment. And once you've made that investment, there's a lot of incentive to try to make it work (between sunk cost fallacy and potential payoff). Lots and lots and lots of companies fail because they build something that doesn't solve a need. It's like the number one thing you learn. This is nothing new. It's just that in the age of hyperscaled tech companies, the payoff for unlocking a new market or changing user behavior is huge, so you end up with lots of attempts to develop some technology and then figure out how to use it to change the world.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  I actually think this sort of thing is a huge part of SV-style companies are increasingly viewed in a poor light by normal people. It's hubris. The mindset takes "People don't know what they want. We do." far, far too seriously.

ansible 2y ago

Huh, interesting. I've never used our Alexa for shopping. If I said something like "Alexa, buy more filters", even being very clever and looking at my order history, it would still get something wrong. And then I'd need to use another device to actually make the order. While it seems to work fine on the speech recognition part, in that Alexa understands the words I say, it never seemed good enough to actually navigate a task like ordering the right kind of filter. I knew there was some behind-the-scenes scripting going on, but I didn't realize just how much... We mostly use our Alexa for kitchen timers, reminders, and video calls with family. Occasionally for playing music too. No, I don't want to subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited.

malfist 2y ago

I used Alexa for audible a few times and it was a nightmare. It wouldn't start where I stopped listening on my phone, and then when I stopped listening with the alexa it wouldn't record the correct timeslot back to my phone. So I either had to _only_ listen with alexa, or listen with everything else on my phone. Guess which I picked?

ssl-3 2y ago

Shopping for household goods on Amazon is a minefield to begin with. Prices vary wildly from day to day, even on identical (same ASIN) products. And descriptions tend to be vague (is it Mediterranean oregano, or is it Mexican oregano? They're not the same plant, but it doesn't fucking say!). Per-unit pricing is often broken (is it 24 units of single cans, or is it 4 units of 6 cans each?). Even when sitting in front of a real computer, it often takes fair amount of effort to find a product that represents the kind of value at the moment that I'm interested in. Comparative shopping with this mess on the back end doesn't work with the current state of Alexa. There's details that are important to me, as a consumer, that can't be boiled down to a price and an 8-word summary. If the back-end data weren't broken, buying with Alexa could be made to work if it could get a grasp (using ML or some other buzzword) of how a buyer's proclivities tended to be shaped. For instance, some people want the best per-volume price, and some others want the highest quality at any expense, with a huge range in between. I myself don't have a ton of room for bulk buying, so I often aim for a medium volume of moderate-high quality, tempered by a price that is low today. But, again: The back-end data is broken, and Alexa is too stupid to make what I think are good decisions. When I can't trust the talking computer on my countertop to make good decisions for me, and if my hands are already full, I don't have time to have a drawn-out conversation with a bot, so I won't ever actually buy stuff that way. It's not functionally better than Amazon's abortive Dash Buttons[0] from 8-ish years ago, which were also untrustworthy for many of the same (or related) reasons. --- But if I'm cooking in the kitchen and I notice that I'm low on oregano, I do have time to say "Alexa, add oregano to my cart." And I'll also invariably make time to interrupt its misguided response with a quick "Alexa, shut the fuck up" once it starts prattling on about the useless summary from the bad back-end data (GIGO), so I can get back to doing what I'm doing. This is important to mention because if I weren't already busy with my hands, I wouldn't bother with using Alexa at all for this task. Eventually, I'll find myself in front of a real computer again and I'll go through and true up the things I've used Alexa to put in my cart, so they match my actual expectations, and actually buy some things. And while this is useful to me, it's obviously pretty far removed from the target goal of the system. And it can't ever get better until they fix their data. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Dash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Dash

ryandrake 2y ago

> "Shopping with your voice" never took off despite many attempts. We're seeing this more and more in tech: Company comes out with a feature that few people want. It doesn't gain adoption. They make many attempts to cajole and nudge users to use the feature. Users don't use the feature. They make more buttons and flows trigger the feature. Users ignore them. They start tricking users into using the feature, with dark patterns and misleading buttons. Users deliberately learn and avoid these. Exasperated, they declare "Why, oh why, won't users just use this feature!? They're just uninformed or don't know what's good for them!" Whatever happened to starting with what the user actually wants and then working backwards from that to the actual feature? More and more, companies are more interested in serving their own metrics than serving their users.

mason55 2y ago
Lots of companies still work like you said. With a company like Amazon, though, you have two things at play. The first is that it takes a massive amount of dollars to make an impact on revenue. You're just not going to move the needle by selling a new product or something. It's a mature business and to meaningfully increase your revenues you need to alter people's current behavior so they spend more. But, the second thing, is that if you manage to increase revenue by a percentage point, that is a huge amount of money, and that potential payoff can justify a huge investment. And once you've made that investment, there's a lot of incentive to try to make it work (between sunk cost fallacy and potential payoff). Lots and lots and lots of companies fail because they build something that doesn't solve a need. It's like the number one thing you learn. This is nothing new. It's just that in the age of hyperscaled tech companies, the payoff for unlocking a new market or changing user behavior is huge, so you end up with lots of attempts to develop some technology and then figure out how to use it to change the world.
JohnFen 2y ago
I actually think this sort of thing is a huge part of SV-style companies are increasingly viewed in a poor light by normal people. It's hubris. The mindset takes "People don't know what they want. We do." far, far too seriously.