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Why Amazon is Losing The Voice Assistant Battle

Liz Martin
Startup Stash
Published in
5 min readNov 30, 2022

Why are experts calling Alexa, one of Amazon’s best-selling products, a colossal failure?

If you’d prefer to watch, here’s a video:

In 2011, Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, stood at a whiteboard and made a sketch for a new device. It was something inspired by Star Trek, his favorite TV series as a child. He called the device a voice computer. This voice computer had no keyboard, no mouse, and no screen. It was wireless and featured a microphone and mute button.

He would eventually hand this idea over to his technical advisor, who would lead the team in bringing Bezos’s Sci-fi vision to life.

Alexa Was Top Secret

In typical Amazon fashion, this project was shrouded in mystery. The company would use a code name to refer to it. During the hiring process, emails and messages were vague.

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Published in Startup Stash

We share entrepreneurial stories, insights, and ideas in order to help your startup grow

Written by Liz Martin

Part creative, part tech nerd. Talks about big tech.

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