Amazon (AMZN.O) is planning a major revamp of its decade-old money-losing Alexa service to include a conversational generative AI with two tiers of service and has considered a monthly fee of around $5 to access the superior version, according to people with direct knowledge of the company’s plans.
Alexa was never supposed to make money by itself. It was supposed to do two things, collect information and lower the barrier to buying things.
They must have either collected enough data to lower the value of collecting any more, or they have realized that people got over the novelty of asking Alexa to order more dog food.
My guess is the latter, because buying anything from Amazon now requires 15 minutes of research to make sure it’s actually what you want and not at some ridiculous marked up price. I wouldn’t trust Alexa to pick the best result on the first try.
Alexa has a tendency to give you the ‘featured’ product no matter how precisely and specifically you ask her for something. Even if you don’t have to research and know exactly what you want, it’s almost always easier to just go find your phone.
The real game changer for Alexa was always having a voice assistant that you can integrate with just about whatever you want that isn’t tied to someone’s phone. The idea of going into someone’s house and just saying ‘Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights’ or ‘Alexa, is it cold outside?’ is where the Alexa magic lies, but Amazon never could figure out how to make that profitable on it’s own, just doesn’t contribute to the business case.
Amazon never could figure out how to make that profitable on it’s own
They are so dumb. Every house could use their products, they just need to charge normal prices. Everyone has light switches in every room. Imagine if most new houses came with “Alexa” switches and electric plugs.
They tried to make money on a few hobbyists who could set it up for themselves. They needed to go after the construction market. Charge half of what they were charging and sell a ton to every house in America. It’s not an iPhone. It’s a basic device to turn on the lights.
You’re right that is a real loss. Really, an Alexa that didn’t require a personalized amazon account could still be huge if they could figure out how not to have to justify the costs of running the servers. I think that unwillingness to let Alexa be just a voice assistant is the key roadblock. In a similar vein, Alexa for business could have been a really big deal too if they could have worked it out a bit faster but now I think interest has mostly died out before it had a chance to be adopted.
I’m not a huge fan of the company and I think it’s a coin flip as to whether they would just completely screw it up, but I wonder what would have happened if someone like Crestron had taken a real interest instead of just half-assing an integration.
You’re right, but the reason that hasn’t caught on is that talking to your “smart” house is stupid. You can’t possibly program every possible command or situation, and telling Alexa to dim the lights in your kitchen to 40% is slower than using a dimmer switch. Actual smart homes are automated to the point where you don’t need to talk to your room.
This. Running Home Assistant on literally anything stronger than a raspberryPi means you can automate damn near anything. And yea, it might be a pain in the ass to setup, but once it’s done it basically runs itself.
And it’s infinitely, overwhelmingly better than than asking Google or Alexa to do any of it.
I have a bunch of wireless light switches all over the house, it’s stupidly convenient once you stop thinking they have to be stuck in thy wall.
I’ve had a few Alexas over the past five years or so, and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever used any of them to actually buy anything. They’re all glorified Bluetooth speakers for my phone.
I wouldn’t trust Alexa
Trusting Alexa/Amazon is insane. It wasn’t insane X years ago (your value of X will vary), but it definitely is insane now
This is just it, it can barely handle manage my lighting system. How am I going to trust it to make purchases? Brought to you by the same people who can’t keep fake reviews off their platform.
Won’t keep fake reviews off their platform. It’s not a matter of ability, but of will.
As someone with ASD, GAD, and MDD (all diagnosed if it matters), smart home devices are an essential service to me. I can quickly set redundant reminders to help me with personal routines, add stuff to my shopping and to-do lists, and quickly get my lights and music set to what I need them to be when I am experiencing an anxiety episode. I definitely understand that my data is good and harvested at this point, and I don’t trust them to have done anything good with it. But these dots have made my life work since I bought my first one, and they’ve significantly reduced the anxiety I used to be riddled with.
Between inserting ads into Amazon Video, scaling back on fast delivery, and this it looks like Amazon has maxed out their growth and are scaling back on their loss leaders that were used to get where they are.
For the first time in at least a decade of being a Prime member. I have set a reminder to cancel before it renews next time.
So many deliveries fail to be on time, I’m getting too many ads in my face when I use products I paid for (Fire TV auto-plays ads for content or cars or whatever now).
Don’t set a reminder, just cancel now. If you cancel, you get the rest of the time you paid for and it just doesn’t automatically review, so there’s no penalty to canceling early versus right before the deadline.
I’m not sure that’s true. There’s a pause option and a cancel option. It sounds like canceling ends your benefits immediately, and the pause leaves them. I want to cancel, but at the right time.
Cancel now! It’s incredibly convoluted process that makes you think you’ve done it but no, there’s always one more confirm screen hiding behind a tiny button
Unfortunately, I’m still getting overnight and next day delivery on a lot of stuff, so I’m not giving Prime up. I did stop watching Prime Video already, since I’m not paying yet more.
Now I’m already way into the Apple ecosystem, so if Amazon insists that I give Apple yet more money for airpods, I’m ok with that
I use the overnight and next day delivery a lot, but when it goes wrong it’s very frustrating, because there’s seemingly nowhere else to buy an 8TB HDD in-person. Fry’s closed down, Best Buy is garbage, etc.
We made this bed by giving Amazon all of our business and shutting down all their competitors. :-/
Fortunately, there are solutions to each of those:
- phones - alternative Android ROMs and fdroid
- cars - remove the connectivity module
- TVs - don’t let it access your network and don’t use the apps
That’s not true for Alexa, you need to allow it to spy for its core functionality to work.
I wouldn’t be able to find a use for Alexa if they were paying me $10/month to use it.
I’d buy 2, start a neverending conversation going between them, and lock em away in the corner in the attic.
With how garbage Alexa is now, there is no way in hell I’m paying them anything. I’d love a refund for the three useless dots I have now.
