Amazon virtually kills efforts to develop Alexa Skills, disappointing dozens

Re:Amazon virtually kills efforts to develop Alexa Skills, d... by user_7832 on Friday April 12, 2024 @07:03AM (#40011246)

> I cannot say "Alexa open my curtains tomorrow at 6:45am"

The "funny" thing is Google Home could do this (Turn on/off device after 8 hours) but recently they've removed the option & the assistant refuses. I assume it's for liability purposes, but it feels stupid.

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Re:Amazon virtually kills efforts to develop Alexa Skills, d... by krisgenre on Friday April 12, 2024 @07:25AM (#40011350)

Don't know about opening curtains but I have a Deepbot connected to Google Home (now Gemini) and saying "Hey Google, start cleaning at 5.30 PM" works.

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Re:Amazon virtually kills efforts to develop Alexa Skills, d... by Lutger on Friday April 12, 2024 @11:29AM (#40014038)

Maybe its my imagination, but Google Home could recognize a lot of things that it just can't do or can't do well anymore. It gives the impression that they just downgraded the whole infra behind it to run an inferior, cheaper model, hoping people will eventually stop using it so they can pull the plug altogether.

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Re:Amazon virtually kills efforts to develop Alexa Skills, d... by criddell on Friday April 12, 2024 @11:32AM (#40014072)

If I asked me Echo to close my curtains, it would respond that it doesn’t know about a device with that name. If I then ask it what devices it does know about, it won’t give me an answer.

Will the Google Home tell you the device names it can see?

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Re:Amazon virtually kills efforts to develop Alexa Skills, d... by user_7832 on Friday April 12, 2024 @04:00PM (#40017036)

I don't think it can do that. Asking variations of "what devices/controls/lights can you see/access/control" just gives a google search result for it. Quite stupid flaw imo in the design.

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