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by jasode 1296 days ago
>Would not call this a failed product,

The "colossal failure" in all the recent headlines means "colossal [financial Return-On-Investment] failure" because customers are not shopping with Alexa voice commands.

A lot of consumers do like Alexa and millions have bought them because conveniences like turning on the lights and playing music are desirable -- but those "smart home" type of uses are not increasing revenue for Amazon.

Amazon was betting on more "Alexa, buy AA batteries" (i.e. spend money) instead of just "Alexa, turn on the light". With more sales enabled by Alexa, it would have justified the billions spent on developing the voice recognition infrastructure. In that monetization sense, it's a "colossal failure".
3 comments
amluto 1296 days ago
Amazon isn’t good enough for buying things on Alexa to seem reasonable. Many users barely trust the web interface to show legitimate products — how is voice control supposed to make any sense?

I would believe that Whole Foods could pull this off. Or maybe Target, or more generally any store that competently curates their inventory. That’s not Amazon.

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mupuff1234 1296 days ago
Whole foods is owned by Amazon :)
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solarkraft 1296 days ago
It's an interesting idea.

> Alexa, buy AA batteries

This lets them shill for whatever gives them the best margin directly, without having to present the user multiple products.

I guess it turns out that people tend to want a bit more control than that. Especially considering that when I tell an SO or friend to buy something I can be confident they'll act in my interest, while I can be fairly confident that Amazon will act in Amazon's interests when told to buy me something.

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lostlogin 1296 days ago
It’s even worse than that, as actual chosen products may well be counterfeit.
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TheHappyOddish 1285 days ago
How do you make counterfeit batteries? Are they made of wood or something?
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tootie 1296 days ago
Yeah this is it. I'm not sure how they actually attribute value and if "Alexa, buy batteries" counts to their P&L or the e-commerce side. Either way, I'd assume the same as you that they never intended to turn a profit on device sales but rather as a loss leader for ecomm and it's probably fallen short.

The listening capabilities are probably the most valuable and my grapevine says they're pivoting to buy up audio content (ie Wondery).

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