[ultrarunner]

In a situation with such a low margin of value for the user, there's an even finer point on reducing friction. I know Alexa stopped being used in my household shortly after the "by the way…" addendums were introduced. This seemed to be in recognition of the trend of reduction to memorized phrases, but it was a bad approach. If the other comments are true, and incremental progress was more rewarded, it stands to reason that such a major problem with the service was under appreciated. Had it been recognized as the dead-end of the product, maybe more sophisticated models would have been pursued.