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Amazon is bricking $2,350 Astro robots 10 months after release
- lisper 2y agoDiscontinuing the product is one thing, but intentionally bricking the existing ones (and leaving it up to the former owners to dispose of the resulting e-waste) seems uncalled for to me.
- gusmd 2y agoThey are taking the devices back for recycling.
- ars 2y ago> and leaving it up to the former owners to dispose of the resulting e-waste "Amazon's email to customers encourages owners to recycle Astro for Business through the Amazon Recycling Program, with Amazon covering associated costs."
- CydeWeys 2y agoThese devices are heavily dependent on software running on servers in Amazon's cloud. They're being bricked only because those servers are being turned off because continuing to maintain the server software would be expensive and not to Amazon's gain.
- wongarsu 2y agoMaintaining it wouldn't sell more of this specific product, but simply shutting it down damages their reputation far beyond those directly impacted.
- RoyalHenOil 2y agoIndeed. I recently inherited a bunch of Amazon stock, and I sold it a few days ago because I just don't have much confidence in the way Amazon operates. Decisions like these (releasing products that are not profitable, bricking products shortly after release, etc.) make me think that the company is being poorly managed.
- duxup 2y agoDoes it? Google shuts stuff down left and right and nobody seems to be leaving.
- bhaney 2y ago> and nobody seems to be leaving I don't think you're right about that
- duxup 2y agoI'd love to believe they were, but are they? I haven't seen anything to indicate that.
- Aeolun 2y agoThey just stopped buying more stuff from Google? All the products that people use are ones that have existed for years.
- chillfox 2y agoI did. I used to pay for their stuff, but I have moved to Seafile and Fastmail. Only google product I still use is YouTube, everything else has been replaced and I don't consider new Google products anymore.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 2y agoGoogle constantly shutting things down is precisely why I stopped using Firebase. I can't trust them
- arp242 2y agoThey didn't "simply shut it off", they gave everyone a full refund + $300 voucher. And I guess they sold so few that this just made more sense to refund everyone than keeping maintaining the servers.
- zamadatix 2y agoAn invite only product with extremely meager sales realized to have been about as worthwhile as a brick being fully refunded with $300 extra plus cost of recycling covered may not be a hacker's utopia but seems like a pretty good option to me. Much better than imagining any of these businesses were going to hack the failed gear into something useful instead.
- massysett 2y agoSeems it requires cloud services, so once Amazon shuts these down it’s as good as bricked. Otherwise they have to run the cloud forever, or reprogram them not to need cloud. I had a cat feeder that required cloud, and when that company went out of business I had a brick and no refund. (Yeah I was crazy to buy the thing, but I had my reasons and knew the risks.) That’s the risk with these cloudy devices.
- wongarsu 2y agoIt's always sad when a small startup like Amazon doesn't have the resources to keep a couple servers running and updated. If only some company invented some kind of service to make that kind of thing easier.
- userbinator 2y agoBusiness opportunity to provide a service to reprogram them for non-cloud use.
- jerf 2y agoI wonder how much we're rushing to defend the three businesses that bought a total of 10 of them, most of them connected to Amazon anyhow, or some similar number. I have a hard time imagining Amazon is so much as shutting down 1000 devices here.
- thrtythreeforty 2y agoThey are refunding for them. But in my opinion, you only get a couple of these un-launches before you get a reputation like Google has. Amazon has cancelled lots of consumer stuff in the past (the Alexa buttons or whatever they were) but cancelling business-facing things is new. Businesses are much more cancellation averse than forgetful consumers have proven to be.
- qubex 2y agoDon’t forget their Fire Phone.
- reducesuffering 2y agoThis is practically the same management that produced Fire Phone. It's actually quite something. This division of Amazon management produced Fire Phone, was forgiven and produced Alexa to superficial success so were allowed to then produce this. When now we know that all these projects were huge money trash fires.
- sib 2y agoSorry, but the team that produced Alexa (& Echo) were completely separate from the team that produced the Fire Phone. There were distinct product teams, design teams, software engineering teams, hardware teams, and GM-equivalents (Amazon didn't really call people GM so much in those days.) (Unless you're talking about the entirety of Dave Limp's organization, which produced a lot of things...)
- CydeWeys 2y agoI've actually seen one of these in person (the guy had it for free because he knew someone at Amazon working on the personal dogfood version). I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was actually for, and neither could he, as it was basically solely a party trick for him. They don't even vacuum floors like a Roomba does! The linked article talks about security patrols or whatever, but simply installing security cameras is cheaper and better. A robot obviously rolling along the floor is easy to avoid or to disable.
- UberFly 2y agoI personally could see a use for a mobile security camera, but it needs to be more agile and capable than basically a camera on a table lamp with wheels. Give me a robot dog that can get throughout my house when I'm away and I'd get one. Give it teeth and claws and I'm buying 20.
- aledalgrande 2y ago> Give it teeth and claws and I'm buying 20. That would give me pause after things like swatting... offline device maybe, but on the internet, just to end up on Shodan? Nah
- Izkata 2y agoA Sherlock Holmes adaptation did something like this in 2016, it was their version of Hound of the Baskervilles: https://cbselementary.fandom.com/wiki/Hounded https://cbselementary.fandom.com/wiki/Hounded
- avree 2y agoI also know someone at Amazon who “dogfooded” one! I saw one, single, semi-valid use case, which is that it was a decent way to intermittently check up on your pets without setting up multiple cameras… but obviously not worth it at nearly $3,000 with tax.
- banish-m4 2y ago
- smashah 2y agoPower to the reverse engineers who will stop this stuff from turning to junk. Death to TOS.
- Waterluvian 2y agoMy employer exists because one day Amazon didn’t feel like supporting their warehouse robot b2b anymore. I have a sense that they do this kind of thing to use companies as Guinea pigs. They experiment and then abandon the product and take the lessons elsewhere.
- Animats 2y agoAh, that would be Kiva. That was a shock in the warehousing industry. Many companies make equipment for automated warehouses, and those are long-term commitments for the buyer. To have a key supplier bought out by a competitor, and external customers then cut off was a new thing.
- awestley 2y agoAfter this who on earth would trust the "home" version will stick around?
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoI never really got my head around why users would trust the home version in the first place.
- Izkata 2y agoJust wait for stories about waking up one morning to see the camera extended and looking at your bed.
- crazygringo 2y agoDifferent products for different markets are different products for different markets. It's entirely common to pivot from non-product-market-fit to product-market-fit. That's what companies are supposed to do.
- shermantanktop 2y agoOh no no no. Companies are supposed to be perfect and clairvoyant and never make a mistake. So it’s entirely reasonable to expect them to have no need for learning or fixing or reversing a decision. /s
- jjmarr 2y agoMicrosoft is the king of enterprise because they support their products. https://killedbymicrosoft.info/ https://killedbymicrosoft.info/ Skype for Business is still supported!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 1oooqooq 2y ago> skype Because it is data mining source! google voice, you can still even get under 24h support replies! From freaking google! An actual support email reply, with a first name basis message! It's awesome and scary, Like having a bear waking you up while camping.
- StressedDev 2y agoSkype for Business has very little to do with Skype the consumer application. Skype for Business used to be called Lync. It's a messaging, and communication application for business users. It was replaced by MS Teams.
- 1oooqooq 2y agoexactly. gvoice is also not available to consumers anymore. only domain/workplace/whatever they call that offering today enterprise clients.
- gerdesj 2y agoExchange (on-prem) and MS Office (on your PC, not in browser) are due to get the green curtain, single shot heard treatment in a couple of years time. Outlook is already going oddly Electron flavoured. I think you may mean king of (y)our enterprise, not in a constitutional monarchy way but the feudal form. Note how hard it is to make One Drive go away permanently on Windows. You can't, unless you nobble Windows updates and that is not too bright an idea.
- 2y ago
- 1oooqooq 2y ago> autonomously patrol spaces up to 5,000 square feet with an HD periscope and night vision, it could carry small devices please, tell me someone had an armed response Astro video somewhere
- anigbrowl 2y agoThis really ought not be allowed. If you take a product off the market and stop supporting it, you should release the code and support information to enable people who bought it to keep it viable. Subscription models and clever contractual arrangements are bullshit fig leaves for companies trying to have their cake and eat it too.
- duxup 2y agoIMO you get a pass if you refund the money. Amazon is doing just that (and giving them an Amazon credit on top of the refund).
- ionwake 2y agoAgreed it should have a name like ethical closure
- crazygringo 2y agoThey have plans to release related products for the home. So no, they shouldn't be obligated to release the code, because obviously that's code that may be greatly reused, and they don't exactly want to help out competitors (nor should they be obligated to). Also, they're refunding the devices entirely (with an additional credit) and taking them back for recycling. So they seem to be doing 100% the right things here.
- jijji 2y agoreminds me of the Amazon Cloud Cam product. I had over a hundred of those cameras on my rentals, and in one day there useless. Just like how Google is found to be doing this kind of behavior in the past, Amazon now too is the new brand not to trust with any long term investment.
- ungreased0675 2y agoThis type of thing is bad for the internal innovator who must expend political capital to get their organization to try new things. “Hey boss, Amazon has this new thing we should try.” Burn those people a few times and they’re gone forever.
- Reason077 2y agoBad for innovative product engineers at companies like Amazon, too. Pretty demoralising to have your product canned on a whim after years of effort to bring it to release. Maybe it’s better to just work on boring things, don’t stick your neck out…
- malfist 2y agoThat's certainly been the atmosphere here lately. The messaging used to be "work on the big ideas, we'll take care of you if the product fails" Amazon would shutter projects and move people around. The past few years though, they just lay everyone off in that project. It has a chilling affect to work new ideas when you know the next round of cost cutting could take your job
- Invictus0 2y agoMost of the Astro team was laid off last year. I spoke with multiple people that had been fired from the team.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- banish-m4 2y agoYep. It's unwise to embark on new ventures half-heartedly, without thinking ahead to their market potential, or without derisking them by experimenting before going into production, only to then yank the rug out from the team so quickly. It's Google-like dilettancy, or like Meta's Portal and Workplace.
- ec109685 2y agoWorking backwards, customer centricity, etc. etc. from their principles and they couldn’t figure out this was going to be a dud? Maybe it’s cost prohibitive to produce something like this robot at tiny scale, but it seems like the best way to develop would be to identify a few partner businesses, super serve them well and then sell to general public. Stripe is famous for developing products that way. E.g. stripe subscriptions were built in concert with Atlasian and other companies, then released to everybody [1]. To be fair, maybe that’s what they are doing with their home product. And to be doubly fair, building a subscription billing product is far more straightforward than introducing a new category. [1] https://www.lennyspodcast.com/building-a-culture-of-excellence-david-singleton-cto-of-stripe/ https://www.lennyspodcast.com/building-a-culture-of-excellen...
- teaearlgraycold 2y ago> Stripe is famous for developing products that way. E.g. stripe subscriptions were built in concert with Atlasian and other companies, then released to everybody They’re just using the standard startup playbook here
- ec109685 2y agoYes, that’s why surprising Amazon isn’t for these niche products.
- hbosch 2y ago>Working backwards, customer centricity, etc. etc. from their principles and they couldn’t figure out this was going to be a dud? As someone who worked inside Amazon, the LPs and particular "customer obsession" are quite a lot more malleable than they might appear. For example, a PM might pitch "ads by default in Prime Video" as quote-unquote customer obsessed because ads inform customers about products that they could use. Just a hypothetical scenario of course.
- chillfox 2y agoI just yesterday logged into Prime video after not having used it for a while and saw that they added ads. I went straight to Amazon and cancelled my prime subscription.
- smoyer 2y agoIf someone sends me one of these dead units I'd be happy to work on creating OSS software to run it ... And perhaps it would be a great challenge for our FIRST robotics team during the off-season!
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoIs anyone surprised? This part of Amazon has been setting money on fire for years. It hasn’t stopped the people involved from being rewarded though. Amazon employees complain about how the teams in this part of the company get essentially all the headcount or resources they request and build up giant teams that do busy work and get promoted. But they’ve failed to build even one sustainable business. For those who got promoted, this part doesn’t matter - they can just move teams or companies and keep their undeserved titles.
- shermantanktop 2y agoWouldn’t having a dumpster-fire project on your work history be considered a negative by other teams?
- jhgvh 2y agoNot really. The typical SDE or SDM from these projects delivered a bunch of good, working software. The product managers might have a harder time proving that they did their job well; but there's really no penalty for an SDE who chooses to support a longshot effort. That said, the idea that the davelimp organization is given carte blanche for headcount and resources is laughably inaccurate.
- spamizbad 2y agoThis is going to be the new norm from big tech firms. After the massive layoffs there's just no capacity left for these quixotic speculative products inside major tech companies. What remains of their labor force is focusing on their core business areas. The last these bets is AI, which already has Wall Street recoiling at the cost.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago"Google", as a verb, should begin transitioning to mean 'cancel product': Amazon have googled Astro robots.
- foxylad 2y agoAmazon could reduce this PR disaster by organising to give returned Astros to school programming clubs. Along with a way to hack the firmware, of course.
- ysacfanboi 2y agoBTW, if you can hack Astro, you can hack Alexa...
- Eduard 2y ago... elaborate...
- shermantanktop 2y agoDon’t hold your breath. Unsubstantiated nudge-wink claims like this are the province of high school kids and blowhards.
- ysacfanboi 2y agoMy statement is most certainly factual. Don't assert what you don't know.
- Finnucane 2y agoIs it really a disaster? They cancelled a thing that most people probably didn't even know existed until yesterday. In that sense, it is like Google.
- noisy_boy 2y agoThe kids would probably be more successful in figuring out innovative usages for the product.
- oidar 2y agoThis is exactly the same thing they did with the Amazon Glow Projector. https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/20/23415167/amazon-glow-support-discontinued-refund https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/20/23415167/amazon-glow-sup...
- autoexec 2y ago> Per Amazon's emails, the company is still keen to release the home version of Astro Maybe they find it easier to convince consumers to let amazon spy on them and their homes than it is to convince businesses to let amazon spy on what happens in the office, or maybe the data they were collecting from businesses doesn't seem like it's be as valuable to them as the data they'll collect by putting a mobile camera and microphone in households.
- Eduard 2y agowhat's the bricking part here? will the robots receive a self-destruct command (real bricking), or will required external APIs be shut down (effectively bricking, but with a possibility of third-party service resurrection) ?
- WalterBright 2y agoWith Astro put to sleep, I'm worried about Rosey the Robot.
- whycome 2y agoAt this point sell-brick-refund is starting to sound like a capital-raising model. Get cash and customer data and maybe some other buy in and then return it after 1 year. Keep profits.
- mattwilsonn888 2y agoCompetition zozzled successfully.
- nottorp 2y ago> In May 2023, an Amazon representative told Insider that the firm had eyes on the potential of generative AI for Astro. So... this was a security bot right? Did they want to use generative AI to hallucinate your security videos instead of, you know, filming them?