You sort of wonder what happened. I assume the thinking was along the lines of: If you had a personal human assistant at home you'd probably delegate a lot of things to them. (Not sure how true this is in general, but let's go with that.)

But Alexa would have to be a lot more intelligent and plugged into a lot more systems before it could do tasks of any complexity--especially tasks with financial consequences.

There's maybe half a dozen things I use Alexa for and none of them involve giving Amazon a nickel.

> Amazon has been subsidizing it in the hope that people would buy stuff on a moment's whim any time of the day.

I think the deeper issue is that when Amazon started the product (I heard rumours of it circa 2014 or so?) Amazon was a trusted retailed. Stuff was cheap and generally good. Now it's a scummy marketplace filled with fakes and frauds. I'm not buying anything off it until I've deeply reviewed what I'm about to buy.

> I'm not buying anything off it until I've deeply reviewed what I'm about to buy.

<...> and even then you might get a fake from due to commingled inventory. Even for books ([1], [2], [3]).

1. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6920552...

2. https://twitter.com/burkov/status/1369096357252849664

3. https://hairysun.com/amazons-book-piracy-problem.html

I will never understand how strategists at trillion dollar companies like Amazon can get it so wrong. They poured a massive amount of money into dash buttons and gave away millions of them, thinking that if people had a "Tide" branded button next to their washing machine they'd press it on a whim and spend a fortune on detergent pods. In reality people don't behave like that.

I don't know if I'd spend a fortune on detergent pod with a button, but I'd definitely use it to order more detergent and thus end up buying it from Amazon instead of the grocery store. Same with toilet paper and whatever infrequent buys that you want when you notice something is running low

Except you don't know what exactly you are buying, what the price is, whether the purchase went through, when it will reach you... What Amazon quickly found out is that even if the button is within reach people will still prefer to take an extra 10 seconds to pull out the phone from their pocket and tap the Amazon app instead.

When doing the initial activation of the Dash button, you had to choose the item that it would purchase from a list of items belonging to the corresponding brand on the button itself. The available choices were fairly diverse, differing in style/quantity/price/etc.

When you pressed the button, you know what you were buying and how much it cost, because you're the one who set it up.

As for how to determine whether the purchase went through or not, an LED would light/flash on the button to indicate success/failure, and you'd receive an email with more detailed information such as the item being purchased, its cost, and the address where it will be shipped. If the button press was a mistake, you could simply cancel the order.

I wouldn't count on prices not changing relative to other retailers on this sort of thing--or a particular SKU remaining the best deal.

For the types of things purchased with these buttons, an extra dollar here and there wasn't something I was concerned about. Customers who were price-conscience likely wouldn't be purchasing the name brand items anyway; all the big box stores have "store brands" that serve the same purpose at a much lower price.

I think this is what sets you apart from the customer Amazon was trying to target

And, especially if you don't live in a dense city without a car, things like Tide pods are exactly the sort of thing that is very likely cheaper at the local Walmart than on Amazon. Pretty much all the stuff Amazon was pushing these buttons for is exactly the stuff I usually stock up on every six months at Walmart.

Did you use the buttons for these things?

I had a large number of the dash buttons (likely two dozen or so), which I always found to be extremely convenient. When I was running out of some product, a simple press of the button was far more convenient for me than remembering to pick it up the next time I went to the store.

When they discontinued the service, I put all the buttons in a cabinet drawer hoping that they could be "jailbroken" to act as an arbitrary IoT button in the future (like the official Amazon IoT button[1]), but as far as I can tell this never came to fruition (barring a few exceptions) and they're basically doomed to e-waste.

[1]: https://aws.amazon.com/iotbutton/

It is fairly obvious to me, they were trying to make their service part of infrequent product grocery shopping.

And not a bad idea, just one that didn't play out.

I certainly wouldn't call it 'so wrong'.

The thing that always seemed really strange to me is that I don’t understand how to order anything without looking at the details, comparing prices, checking alternatives, etc. Even with food that I use regularly - do I just say “order almond milk”? I can’t remember the brand… do I need to specify the size? Do I need to double check when is the earliest delivery? Do other people order just “bread” or “light bulbs” or “toilet tissue”?