
The inside story of how Amazon created Echo - davidst
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-inside-story-of-how-amazon-created-echo-2016-4?op=1
======
jkraker
summary: Bezos may or may not have established a requirement for the 1 second
response time, Amazon did a bunch of testing to craft responses to common
questions, Bezos wanted to make sure it wasn't seen as just another music
device and it may eventually make Amazon $1 billion.

I had hoped for a bit more detail.

~~~
anonymouse12345
(1) Yes - after reviewing much internal and comparative data (2) Yes - lots
and lots (3) Yes - he's not a huge music fan (4) Easy speculation, but
probably yes given ASP and likely units sold

source: physically present in many meetings in which first 3 were discussed,
debated, and decided.

~~~
rdl
Does he like audiobooks? Audible integration is one of my main loves about the
Echo -- I own 3 of them now. There are some minor tweaks which the app could
use ("end-of-chapter sleep" being the main one, and maybe a go-back-5m on top
of go-back-30s, and an auditory representation/readout of how far into a
chapter/book/etc. you are.)

------
andersen1488
How is this any more useful than my smartphone? I'm also extremely skeptical
of voice controlled anything ever catching on. It's just too awkward, no
matter how good the technology gets.

~~~
Houshalter
Its much better than a smartphone mic. And always on, unlike a phone you need
to take out of your pocket.

------
serge2k
> seemed like more confirmation that the ecommerce giant lacked the chops to
> create a game-changing hardware device.

Only if you haven't heard of the kindle.

> lengthy internal debates about its market appeal

something something fire phone.

------
guptaneil
I'm fascinated by Echo because it seems like a silly idea on paper, yet I
can't stop hearing good things about it.

Genuine question: are people not concerned about the NSA potentially listening
to all their conversations?

I am tempted to buy one, based solely on the rave reviews, but I'm 80%
confident the NSA could hack into it and bug my home if they wanted.

~~~
Jemaclus
I guess an obvious question is: what makes you think they haven't already? You
have a smartphone, yeah?

More realistically, I would say that for most people, the NSA thing is a non-
issue. Most of America isn't as privacy-minded as HN tends to be. I personally
am not concerned about that. If the NSA is hacking into my Echo, there are
bigger issues than the Echo -- namely, the NSA is overreaching. I'm not sure
that ruling out an otherwise beneficial symptom of the problem really fixes
the problem itself.

In other words, if you don't have an Echo, does that magically make the NSA
powerless? No, of course not.

~~~
guptaneil
Great points. While I don't consider myself that privacy-minded, I have been
trying to be more conscious of it lately. I suppose I trust my phone more for
two reasons:

1\. The public battle between the FBI and Apple gives me some confidence that
my phone isn't bugged. 2\. Even if it is bugged, my phone spends most of its
time in my pocket or in a corner of my bedroom charging. Its microphones
aren't good enough to pick up any real conversation in either situation.

The Echo is unique in that it is specifically designed to hear all
conversation in a room and placed in a central location at all times.

Having said that, I agree that the Echo will not make or break the NSA. It is,
however, one more potential security hole I am willingly bringing into my
life. I will have to weigh the benefits to that risk. Just like I continue to
use my smartphone, Gmail, Facebook, etc because the benefits have outweighed
the risk, I am coming around to the benefit side of Echo's equation.

~~~
ajford
If the NSA had any reason to listen in on your conversations, nothing will
stop them. It's just as easy to point a laser microphone at any window in your
home, or simply planting a bug in your home.

~~~
mikeash
Easier yet, just remotely activate the microphone on one of your smartphones
or other devices. Most people have already accepted internet connected
listening devices into their homes.

------
voltagex_
Why can't I buy one outside of the US?

~~~
greyman
I suppose they are busy meeting the demand from U.S. customers, but I hope
they will go international later on.

------
spark3k
Jeff Bezos' marketing arm at it again. Notice that the Tesla Model 3 was the
hottest news of the weekend and only got a tiny Business Insider article?

~~~
catwithribbon
Without trying very hard I found 4 Business Insider articles about the model 3
published in the space of 2 days, including 3 different articles about the
model 3 published in one day...

[http://www.businessinsider.com/here-is-the-tesla-
model-3-201...](http://www.businessinsider.com/here-is-the-tesla-
model-3-2016-3)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-everything-we-know-
abou...](http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-everything-we-know-about-the-
just-revealed-tesla-model-3-2016-4)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-model-3-is-teslas-
biggest...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-model-3-is-teslas-biggest-
gamble-here-are-the-risks-2016-3)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-stock-
model-3-2016-4](http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-stock-model-3-2016-4)

Amusingly one of the comments under one of those articles even accuses BI of
having a "lovefest" for Elon.

------
p4wnc6
Is echo a profitable business unit for Amazon?

I don't know a single person in my extended network, ranging from elderly
family members to colleagues and tech professionals, to my teenage sister's
cohort, who considers it anything but an obnoxious idea. I've actually made a
point to try and ask people I know about it without sharing my opinions with
them first, because I earnestly want to understand if people want these kinds
of devices in their homes.

Though the sample of my connections is small (N ~ 75 people), it is fairly
diverse and randomized across age, income level, education, tech proficiency,
and world-wide geographic location, and it has seriously been a completely
uniform, 100% rate of negative opinion regarding the idea of Echo.

I'd like to see more official numbers though, to better understand where the
demand does come from for it.

~~~
eclipxe
[http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-SK705DI-
Echo/dp/B00X4WHP5E/ref=...](http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-SK705DI-
Echo/dp/B00X4WHP5E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459726284&sr=8-1&keywords=echo%5C#customerReviews)

35k people have reviewed it. 4.5 star average. 35k > 75

~~~
andersen1488
Yes, everyone knows you should trust a site's own reviews for a product
online.

~~~
lowtolerance
Just like everyone should trust that someone on the internet is sincere in
their claim to have surveyed 75 people in his social network(which magically
contains a random distribution of the population) about their opinions on the
Amazon Echo, with unanimously negative results.

~~~
p4wnc6
I'm not asking anyone to trust my network survey. I am saying, "Hey, I
surveyed my network and it really disagrees, to a frankly unbelievable degree,
from what the popular presentation is -- can someone point me to some sales,
etc., data to understand this disparity?"

Linking to Amazon reviews does imply a certain belief that it's a credible
source of information, but I have never found that to be true. Many products
I've purchased with 4-5 star average reviews and many thousands of reviews
overall have nonetheless been defective, broken easily after opening, or
fallen short of the descriptions in other ways.

Additionally, there's also the problem of sources of review bias, like people
who frequently review new tech and thus overlook certain rough edges or
pitfalls because, to them, those aren't a big deal with bleeding edge tech and
can be forgiven (but to regular consumers, it's often not true), or like
people who have devoted many hours to climbing high in the rankings of Amazon
reviewers, and are implicitly affected by thinking of how their review might
affect the way they are perceived in the Amazon reviewer rankings.

Of course, my sample of 75 from my network _could also_ be biased, but I'm not
asking anyone else to believe the result of that sample, or even to believe
that I actually conducted that sample. You could even treat my comment as
though it started out with "Imagine if the following was true:" and go from
there if you wanted, and just treat it as a thought experiment in terms of how
to actually prove the hype over Echo derives from actual sales success and
consumer traction.

It's very telling to me that my comment is downvoted and attacked on weak
grounds rather than addressed.

If it's any comfort, I really, actually have asked around 75 of the people in
my network, which includes extended family of a variety of age ranges and tech
propensity across the midwestern US. But I have also asked friends across
Europe and southeast Asia over gchat and Skype too, as well as former
colleagues in most of the large urban areas along both coasts of the US, and
one in Mexico City.

It's actually really, really, really easy for a person to get a pretty
diversified sample of people just asking questions to their social network.
There surely are dimensions along which it is not well diversified, such as
people living below international poverty standards -- because the very nature
of considering purchasing an Echo or having an internet connection and Skype
account to talk to me overseas is correlated with not being below some
international poverty line. And it's perfectly fine for people to suggest this
invalidates the usefulness of my ad hoc social connection survey.

It's disappointing to me that people are focusing on criticizing some ad hoc
survey with a small N. No one, certainly not me, is claiming that survey to be
statistically rigorous. But, if you assume the survey I describe did actually
occur with the results I explained, then it's at least an anomalous outcome
that might prompt someone to say, "Hey, what are the numbers that make people
think Echo is actually successful?"

If you don't want to assume anything about the survey, because it's an
internet comment and you don't care, then fine. Don't. But in what possible
way could it be valuable to divert attention away from the question at hand
("Why is Echo hyped?") and waste time arguing about an experience I claim to
have had (asking for and receiving opinions on Echo) that you cannot verify.

Amazon doesn't release sales numbers, and all the growth stats for Echo that
appear in puff pieces are just described as sales growth, but relative to some
baseline that we don't know. An article that says "sales up 300%" is junk
unless you can actually see the sales data to understand what that 300% means.

And don't get me wrong. This is not Amazon hate. I'm not Amazon's biggest fan
for reasons of how they treat workers, but I am still an Amazon customer and I
even wrote a whole thing on another post the other day talking about the
usefulness and value I get from Amazon Prime Music.

It just seems kind of nuts that someone can't say, "Hey, my experience when
I've gone out of my way to ask about Echo to lots of people is that literally
no one is interested in it -- what data is there to help me understand why
Echo is still so hyped?" without being downvoted out of some HN group-think /
Amazon tribalism.

It really, really was an _earnest_ question. I'm just asking for what data
sources there are to suggest Echo's hype is justified. Linking to Amazon's own
reviews for it is clearly not a reasonable answer. So, what else?

~~~
lowtolerance
Frankly, it is unbelievable that 100% of the people you asked had even heard
of the Amazon Echo(it's hardly a household name), let alone that every single
one of them had the same opinion on the product. Accusing people of engaging
in group-think or tribalism over being downvoted for making a very dubious
claim speaks volumes about the brand of pseudo-rationality you are engaging
in, regardless of how truthful you are or aren't being with your claim.

It's one to thing to earnestly ask "what data is there help me understand why
Echo is still so hyped". I don't think anyone downvoting you takes issue with
you asking for information.

But when you're asking this question immediately after claiming to have
surveyed a large group of people in your personal network - supposedly taking
into account age, tech literacy, physical location, etc. - and received not
only negative responses across the board, but a specific, unanimous emotional
response that the device in question is "obnoxious", you should expect that
people will receive such an absurd claim with extreme skepticism.

If you didn't want to divert from getting genuine responses to your earnest
question, then you should have asked yourself if including information about
this survey you supposedly conducted really added anything to the discussion,
rather than blame the community for letting it serve as a distraction.

~~~
p4wnc6
Many people have used Amazon within the past year, and therefore it would be
unlikely for them to have not heard of Echo. It's very much a household name,
yet doesn't seem to justify being so. That is puzzling.

Including the information about the overwhelming response I've encountered (an
actual _aversion_ to the idea of the device) is relevant. It is not a
distraction. It's more likely that it is downvoted because it is viewed as a
negative comment about Amazon and about overhyped tech -- such comments are
frequently downvoted here.

It's very easy to have a network that randomizes over age, tech literacy, and
physical location. I'm frankly baffled you would think that's hard to obtain.
I grew up in a poor part of the rural Midwest, met lots of international
people while in college, and worked in southeast Asia and western Europe for
brief periods. Even without those working experiences, I would have a very
globally diverse set of connections, and while it may not be true for
everyone, it's not as outrageously rare as you seem to portray.

I maintain that including my experience of hearing no reaction other than
aversion is useful as a starting point to further ask why it is so hyped. I
don't mind if others don't like it, but I don't agree with your
characterization as a "brand of pseudo-rationality you are engaging in" \--
that part is ridiculous.

