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by karanmg 1305 days ago
Clickbait headline, quoting an anonymous ex-Amazon employee - so could be anyone or no one.

More than a 100M sold by 2019, millions more to date. Clearly something people do want in their homes.

3 comments

It doesn't matter how many were sold if they were all sold at a loss and they don't lead to increased revenue because people only use them as alarm clocks.
Have you ever actually used one? They're shit tech. A new gadget to market to American consumers who have no idea what to get their adult children for the holidays.

All the devices I know of in my immediate family are collecting dust. With the exception of my great aunt and uncle, who have one in the living room and constantly complain about it/at it.

I have a love hate relationship. Saves me time to turn off my space heater, or the living room TV when my kids are in trouble and keep turning on while grounded, or lights, etc, or google some mundane fact my wife and I are arguing about, sometimes getting a laugh when she TOTALLY gets the wrong thing in a funny way.

I curse her out more than anything but at this point she's almost a family member, I do wish they'd hurry up w/ a new generation using GPT3+dalle etc to create some much better ux.

I'd probably use a google home instead if I'd gotten that first, I'm not tied to the alexa brand, and hate Amazon as a whole as being a gluttonous monstrosity of industry, but I'm a big believer in global warming but still eat meat... Sometimes you just do what's convenient, I guess.

The Dot 4 speaker is a decent speaker. The voice recognition is also pretty impressive for a device that small. So, I disagree it's shit tech. But if it was my job to make money from it I would be sweating bullets.
We use ours everyday in nearly every room, but they all are technically collecting dust as well. So may not be the best measure in this instance.
At least the google one is the best alarm clock and timer ever made. That alone justifies its existence.
> Have you ever actually used one?

Many.

I agree. I saw no data in these posts. Alternatives could be that they developed a deep learning algorithm to auto label intent and entity? Or possibly interest rate changes drove the stock down 50% and they need to get more free cash flow? Or they hit a glass ceiling in cpe?