Amazon Learns a New Skill: Making Money From Alexa

For most of Alexa's five years in existence, Amazon has focused on making its voice assistant as ubiquitous as possible, putting it in everything from microwaves to wearable rings to its growing family of Echo devices. Now Amazon has a new focus for Alexa: making money from it, reports The Information. [Editor's note: the link is paywalled; an alternative source was not immediately available.] From the report: The company is exploring how it can profit from premium content on Alexa, such as video, music, and news, according to two people familiar with the matter. Amazon could take a cut of subscription and ad revenue from such content, the people said. Meanwhile, Amazon is keeping a closer eye on costs at the large organization responsible for its voice assistant. After several years of rapid growth saw the unit balloon to more than 10,000 people, the group's headcount has stopped swelling, said three current or former employees. Until now, the priority for many people in the unit was proliferation -- more device sales, more partnerships, and more "skills," Amazon's name for voice apps. But Amazon has told employees that next year it will begin assessing the success of Alexa teams partly based on "engagement" metrics that reflect customer usage of the assistant, one of the people said.

Bass ackwards

[Joce640k]

Shouldn't that be: "Alexa learns a new skill: Making money for Amazon"?

Re:

[Prof.Phreak]

"Alexa learns a new skill: Making money for Amazon"?

...or report a success: ``Alexa team learned a new skill: Making money from Amazon''.

They really have 10k people behind this thing, without profits to back that up???

Ideas under consideration

[sinij]

The company is exploring how it can profit from Alexa, here are some ideas under consideration:

For $9.99/mo let your neighbors listen-in.
Broadcast creepy chanting and wailing at 2am, but only downstairs. Subscribing to Prime allows one to opt-out.
Ordering dollhouses "by mistake" on a regular basis.
Advanced Weight Watchers app - the AI locks you in the house and starves you to death.
Broadcasting anthem on military time. Subscribe for mute functionality, you unpatriotic scumbag.

Re:

[BuckBundy]

Jeez, I hope you don't work for Amazon and no one from there is reading this ;-)

Focus on functionallity

[crow]

Amazon and Google both need to focus on functionality. What do people try to do that doesn't work on the first try? What can they do to make the devices smarter? I have both an original Echo and Google Home Minis, and they haven't improved much over time.

How about relatively simple stuff like, "Alexa, in five minutes tell me to check on my toast," or "Hey Google, play my wakeup list at 7:30."

Google is better at answering random questions, but it still needs a lot of work.

Re:

[timeOday]

I agree, it's too soon to pimp out these things when they already don't do so much of what you would like.

Google assistant won't even play mp3's from my phone, it will only play from their streaming service. This obviously is not done to benefit customers in any way.

(And before anybody complains about me complaining about their free services: I paid perfectly good money for my phone).

Embrace. Extend. Extort.

[AxisOfPleasure]

You realy didn't think seriously that Amazon was collecting all that data off Alexa NOT to sell it on and screw you cretins who actually bought into the Alexa BS?

Alright, I'll be fair as my aged father has an Alexa and he finds it useful for remembering things like taking pills and running errands now his memory is not as sharp these days. However there's no way I'm having a "Orwell Device" in my home. It's bad enough I get spied on simply using the internet via a browser, I'm not going to voluntarily provi

Re:

[ambidextroustech]

Let's place Oceania as Google, Eurasia as Amazon and Eastasia as Apple. Therefore, they're all "Orwellian Devices."

Re:

[kamapuaa]

Same old shit, some boomer reflexively hates a new technology. Why is a Luddite on a technology website in the first place?

Re:

[cayenne8]

Same old shit, some boomer reflexively hates a new technology. Why is a Luddite on a technology website in the first place?

K-O Millenial

Re:

[JeffOwl]

#1 Slashdot hasn't been a serious technology site in a long time. #2 Do you see the irony of your statement in light of the parent post talking about how his father, who very well could be an actual Boomer, actually uses it?

Re:

[Rob Lister]

I don't want to say you're over-cynical but folks worry too much. I have an Alexa Echo and I do worry a little. I keep it in the bedroom where nothing private ever happens.

A recipe for

[Tablizer]

Now Amazon has a new focus for Alexa: making money from it [instead of market share]...Amazon has told employees that next year it will begin assessing the success of Alexa teams partly based on "engagement" metrics that reflect customer usage... [emphasis added]

There's a good chance this will end up being Wells Fargo meets Clippy.

would not be surprise

[renegade600]

I would not be surprise if amazon decides to charge a monthly fee just to use Alexa within a few years.

Re:

[Rob Lister]

They already do for some services. I doubt they'll go subscription only because there's too much competition from google and apple.

A fox is wolves clothing?

[aSplash0fDerp]

A digital sales assistant in every room is not predatory in the least bit.

If Amazon installs a mini-fridge in every room and sells travel size liquor bottles and other stuff at inflated prices like hotels, thats predatory.

Get with the program Amazon... You're getting soft...

Odd emphasis for this topic

[Anubis IV]

Slashdot's headline and summary suggest that Amazon should pat itself on the back for figuring out how to make money from Alexa.

That emphasis seems to be out of line with the way that everyone else is reporting on this news. Everywhere else I've seen this reported, the emphasis has been on one of two things:
1) Amazon projected that they would make $5M from Alexa this year, but instead made less than $1M, coming up FAR short of their projections.
2) Amazon monetizing Alexa at all is not necessarily a good thi