Amazon is revamping its Alexa voice assistant as it prepares to launch a new paid subscription plan this year, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter. But the change is causing internal conflict and may lead to further delay.

  • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    Giving something away for free then expecting to make people pay for it is always a winning strategy…

    • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
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      10 months ago

      That’s why i stopped using those at all. It’s always the same.

      But screw alexa. Why would i even want a bug sending my voice to some random server? And pay for it? Wouldn’t use that thing if they’d pay me…

      • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        True but the problem is that they see 1,000,000s of people using the free version and think they are leaving money on the table by not charging and assume ~50% will happily pay for it when the conversion rate from free to paid is usually closer to 1% than it is to 50%.

      • FoxBJK@midwest.social
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        10 months ago

        Or addictive. The first hit’s always free! Get people hooked on Alexa and then tell them it actually costs $10/month to turn your lights off