Pun Salad

Just a brief post today about Amazon's woes, as reported in the WSJ a few days back: Alexa Is in Millions of Households—and Amazon Is Losing Billions.

(For fun, imagine either Bernie Sanders or Carl Sagan reading that headline.)

Article summary: Amazon sells Echo hardware cheap, in the (so far unfulfilled) hope that they will use them as a portal to buy Amazon stuff. Key quote:

Customers actually used Echo mostly for free apps such as setting alarms and checking the weather. “We worried we’ve hired 10,000 people and we’ve built a smart timer,” said a former senior employee.

Um. Setting alarms and checking the weather are exactly my everyday uses for my Echo.

Otherwise: last year, I bought some cheap "smart" plugs to turn the Christmas lights on and off. (Amazon link at your right, why not?) These worked fine, and impressed the kids.

Alexa also tells me when an Amazon delivery has been made. And occasionally nudges me to let me know when Amazon has a new book by an author I follow.

And (oh yeah): it's useful for playing songs: "Alexa, play 'Ode to Billie Joe' by Bobbie Gentry."

But all that extra stuff is also free. Well, other than my Amazon Prime subscription.

But overall, I feel sad about Amazon losing billions on Alexa. Maybe they should do this for real: Alexa Silver. I should be in the market Real Soon Now.