[ home / rules / faq ] [ overboard / sfw / alt ] [ leftypol / siberia / edu / hobby / tech / games / anime / music / draw / AKM ] [ meta / roulette ] [ cytube / wiki / git ] [ GET / ref / marx / booru / zine ]

/tech/ - Technology

"Technology reveals the active relation of man to nature" - Karl Marx
Name
Options
Subject
Comment
Flag
File
Embed
Password (For file deletion.)

Join our Matrix Chat <=> IRC: #leftypol on Rizon


File: 1669104535416.png (295.45 KB, 450x452, 1647331510412.png)

 No.17752

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/

>Alexa has been around for 10 years and has been a trailblazing voice assistant that was copied quite a bit by Google and Apple. Alexa never managed to create an ongoing revenue stream, though, so Alexa doesn't really make any money. The Alexa division is part of the "Worldwide Digital" group along with Amazon Prime video, and Business Insider says that division lost $3 billion in just the first quarter of 2022, with "the vast majority" of the losses blamed on Alexa. That is apparently double the losses of any other division, and the report says the hardware team is on pace to lose $10 billion this year. It sounds like Amazon is tired of burning through all that cash.


>We have to wonder: Is time running out for Big Tech voice assistants? Everyone seems to be struggling with them. Google expressed basically identical problems with the Google Assistant business model last month. There's an inability to monetize the simple voice commands most consumers actually want to make, and all of Google's attempts to monetize assistants with display ads and company partnerships haven't worked. With the product sucking up server time and being a big money loser, Google responded just like Amazon by cutting resources to the division.


All the questions people ask are about the weather or to play music. No one buys shit on alexa which is what they hoped for. Millions of dollars burnt for nothing creating a solution to a problem no one had.

 No.17786

They had the idea of selling the device below cost, like selling a razor handle below cost to make money with the blades or selling a gaming machine below cost to make money with the games. They just forgot to do the second part. Or rather, they thought they would figure it out. They could have made money if it had been a subscription model. And you know what the greatest thing about this story is? They can't expect much from going to a subscription model now. Amazon has conditioned consumers all over the world to expect no fee for such a service. If they change to a subscription fee now, an open-source alternative will quickly spread.
https://fedoramagazine.org/your-personal-voice-assistant-on-fedora-linux/

 No.17787

>expecting people to just ask the device to purchase a product when they know full well from their data collection that people are looking over what they buy before they make the choice, and often want to compare alternative products
how did they even make this blunder?

 No.17790

Good.

 No.17799

>>17786
> If they change to a subscription fee now, an open-source alternative will quickly spread.
You mean you havent heard of Mycroft still?

 No.17803

>>17799
Eeh. I want good capabilities out of the box when only running offline mode. The talk on r/mycroft r/homeassistant is rather negative. Their Mark II uses a different software and the user-written tools for the older model (which they aren't selling anymore) are incompatible with the new one. Maybe in two months the situation will be much better, but for this Christmas season they screwed themselves in my impression.

 No.17964

>>17787
Hubris, and to be fair, many big tech experiments have worked. But yeah, the idea that people will just buy the first product recommended by their digital spyware assistant with no investigation is pretty whack.

 No.18014

>>17803 (NTC)
On one hand, I want to support Mycroft, on the other I don't want their shitty… lets be nice and call them prototypes.

Should I just donate a hundred?

 No.18015

Heh, found this picroft mod on the subreddit

Any other cool projects you've seen? something more original than a magic mirror, please

 No.18304

https://mycroft.ai/blog/update-from-the-ceo-part-1/
<Since starting here in early 2020 I’ve had to make some of the toughest decisions I’ve ever faced, and none more so than at the end of last year. At the end of November, just after the Mark II entered production, I was faced with the reality that I had to lay off most of the Mycroft staff. At present, our staff is two developers, one customer service agent and one attorney.
Well shit.


Unique IPs: 9

[Return][Go to top] [Catalog] | [Home][Post a Reply]
Delete Post [ ]
[ home / rules / faq ] [ overboard / sfw / alt ] [ leftypol / siberia / edu / hobby / tech / games / anime / music / draw / AKM ] [ meta / roulette ] [ cytube / wiki / git ] [ GET / ref / marx / booru / zine ]