Have you heard the news that Amazon is hiring 1,147 new employees just to work on it’s Alexa business? That is more people than all of Google is hiring for technical and products roles put together.
By now, you are prob part of the Alexa customer base. And most likely, so are your parents or possibly even grandparents. She has been a nice little toy to play with. But at this point, she is just that. Something that plays music and gives you barely useful information. Even shopping with Alexa is not the preferred choice of shopping by most Amazon customers. She is basically an oversized dash button.
I have a Google home and an Alexa, and the only thing I use Alexa for is the music. And that is because of the very affordable family music subscription that I have. Everything else, I ask google home. If I want the news, the weather, the time a store closes, I always ask Google.
Amazon may have the market share in the business but why is it hiring so many people to fill these new Alexa based positions? Can the revenue brought in by Alexa really support the need for so many employees?
My imagination must be rather small, or Amazon must be planning a plot twist with Alexa to pull off the revenue returns for such a large expansion. It’s hard to predict what is next for the company. Most companies have a niche that they stick to with a business plan to become the best in your field and not try to do too many things at one time. But Amazon has broken the mold for this one.
When Amazon launched back in wild west of the internet no one could have predicted that someday Amazon would not only sell you underpants and books, but it would hold 42% of the cloud market and that giants like Netflix would come to heavily heavily rely on Amazon services. Who would have thought that Amazon would vet a drone program for delivery, or talk the post office into delivering on Sunday?
So it is entirely possible that Amazon has another ‘take over the world’ plan in its back pocket. Perhaps Alexa is getting ready to drive our cars or clean our houses. If so, I sure hope she quits saying, “Sorry, I don’t know that one.”
Whatever Amazon has in store, I’m sure it will drive the rest of the technology world to try to mimic or outdo the latest and greatest Amazon has to offer.
The Google speaker is superior, too.