Amazon is currently laying off huge portions of its workforce. And according to a report from Business Insider (opens in new tab), the company will soon fire 10,000 more, many of whom will come from the Worldwide Digital unit that manages Echo devices and the Alexa app. Apparently, the division has lost billions every year for several years and is “on pace to lose $10 billion” in 2022.
If Alexa is a “colossal failure of imagination,” as one former employee described it, should you care about the great Black Friday Amazon Echo deals available right now? Or should you steer clear?
Alexa is now ranked third behind Google Assistant and Siri in active users, and these users primarily use the assistant for “trivial” commands like asking about the weather. Barely anyone uses Amazon Skills to shop with partnered companies, and because Amazon sells Alexa devices at cost, the company has no way to recoup its substantial investment.
Amazon told BI that “We are as committed as ever to Echo and Alexa, and will continue to invest heavily in them,” but with the Alexa workforce slashed down, it’s not likely that Alexa will get a boost to its brainpower in the near future.
Here’s the thing, though: that doesn’t necessarily matter. As this report itself explained, people happily use Alexa to play music, start a timer, or ask for random factoids like why the sky is blue. As long as the assistant responds quickly and accurately, the majority of consumers won’t care about anything else.
Every new Echo device uses the AZ2 Neural Edge chip, which we’ve tested in various reviews and gives Alexa a zippy response time to your questions and commands. We hope future Echos will be even faster, but given the Alexa division’s fall from grace, you essentially have no reason to wait on something better in the near future.
Black Friday hasn’t officially started, but you’ll find some excellent Amazon Echo deals live right now. The superb new Echo Dot with Clock (5th Gen) is 33% off, our favorite Echo smart display — the Echo Show 8 — is $60 off, and the petite Echo Show 5 is just $35. Amazon will lose money on every single one it sells, but that’s not your problem! You should happily take advantage of the behemoth company’s poor business decisions if you need a smart speaker in your life.
The only reason not to buy an Echo is if you’re more confident in Google Assistant’s future as a smart assistant. In that case, the Nest Audio — one of the best smart speakers — is also 50% off in the lead-up to Black Friday.
But The Information (opens in new tab) reported last month that Google too is cutting back on Assistant support on non-Pixel devices due to its own financial woes, because it, too, doesn’t seem to make much money for the company.
Again, if you want to take advantage of Google’s excellent AI while it loses money on the transaction, that’s not a bad thing (for you). Your only decision is whether the Nest Audio or Echo speaker is a better fit!
