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Google and Amazon’s smart speakers shopping experience is still horrid

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Alexa Shopping on Echo Show

Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority

As a smart-everything aficionado, if there’s one tech product category that has landed squarely on the boulevard of broken dreams for me, it would have to be smart speakers. Available in a range of shapes, sizes, and form factors, smart speakers and displays were supposed to change how we interact with the internet. However, in my opinion, the professed future of connected speakers becoming indispensable parts of our daily lives has simply not materialized.

I fully invested in Google’s Nest ecosystem and bought some of the best Alexa-powered Echo speakers on the market, and I have more than a few gripes with the products from both companies. But of all the things that bother me, the one that truly drives me bonkers is the astonishingly imperfect online shopping integration.

Do you use voice-based shopping on your smart speakers or display?

3 votes

Less assistant, more gateway

lifx smarter light with app and google home natural light

Ryan Haines / Android Authority

With Amazon taking the lead with the original Amazon Echo and Google following suit, reinventing online shopping was one of the early promises made when showing off voice-first tech. That, obviously, did not happen. It’s hard to disagree that the almost-disposably priced speakers are little more than music streaming hubs and gateways to voice-activate smart plugs and lights.

There exists a glimmer of a futuristic shopping experience between the hubris of complicated control schemes.

Okay, let me rephrase that statement. There does exist an online shopping experience somewhere in the midst of Amazon and Google’s smart speakers. However, the sheer amount of friction involved in finalizing the purchase is enough to put off all but the most ardent users.

Let’s tackle Google’s ecosystem first, shall we? Despite being the custodian of practically all search and product queries on the internet, Google restricts smart speaker-based shopping to just the US. It’s not that Google Shopping, the service powering the back-end of Mountain View’s voice-first search, isn’t available outside the US.

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Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority

In India, where I live, Google Shopping is a fairly competent aggregator and price comparison tool. Bouncing off users to the best available price when purchasing daily essentials shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for my Nest Hub. Instead, the feature is simply not available to me.

Not quite a one-command affair

I expected a better experience from my Echo devices, considering, you know, the shopping juggernaut behind it. Compared to Google’s offerings, things are a bit more streamlined — as long as you stay within Amazon’s ecosystem. However, even that comes with caveats.

Buying coffee using Alexa

Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority

If you stick to display-equipped speakers, the shopping workflow is serviceable. Issuing a simple command like asking Alexa to order a specific brand of coffee usually brings up a smorgasbord of options and variations on the display. The user is then expected to scroll or tap on the item and add it to the cart. Want more than a single bag of coffee? You’ll just have to go through the entire process again.

The Amazon Echo offers a more streamlined voice shopping experience compared to Google, but that’s not saying much.

However, in the case of Amazon’s non-display smart speakers, that same purchase journey turns into a long and cryptic SEO-optimized string wherein you’re never really sure if you’ve landed on the right product. Want two of those? Well, there you go again.

google nest hub shopping list

Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority

The disjointed nature of shopping using smart accessories rears its ugly head in yet another form. Shopping lists should be a pretty common use case for smart speakers. The Google Nest Hub, while unable to actually make purchases in India, makes a handily accessible list for me that syncs across over Google Keep or any other list-making app of my choice.

Amazon’s convoluted approach towards a simple shopping list is symptomatic of feature creep and lack of focus.

In the Echo’s case, the shopping list feature was previously buried three menus deep within the slow-as-molasses Alexa app. While Amazon made moves to improve this user experience by offering a fancy new home screen widget for iPhones and Android devices, it forgot one big feature — this shopping list has no integration with Amazon whatsoever. Essentially, if you are using your Echo device as a shopping hub, you have two completely distinct experiences available. Either shop via Amazon or figure your own way about it.

Alexa shopping list widget

Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority

While I can see the train of thought that led to this product decision, it makes no sense that a centralized shopping list can’t give you the option to tick off selected items for your Amazon shopping cart. Moreover, the widget still drops you into the extremely sluggish and bloated Alexa app that makes performing any task an exercise in frustration.

The lack of streamlined innovation is perplexing

For all my rants and raves, it surprises me that the very smart speakers and displays that were supposed to be the cornerstone of our entire digital existence are still struggling with such rudimentary features. More so considering the impact this struggle has had on profitability for Amazon and how little the company has done to fix the problem.

Amazon’s Alexa division has burned through an estimated $10 billion, and yet the company has made no moves to fix or improve its shopping experience.

Amazon’s loss-making Alexa division is reported to have burnt through almost three billion dollars in just the first quarter of 2022, with lifetime losses estimated to be close to 10 billion dollars. That’s mostly down to Amazon struggling to find a way to monetize the platform. Selling the product at cost makes sense for competitors like Google since it benefits from gathering user data and running fine-tuned ads across all product categories. Amazon, however, only monetizes shopping which makes the poor experience even more perplexing.

Amazon Echo Dot Alexa speaker with light ring turned on stock photo 1

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority

All this to say that timers and weather updates are great, but with advertisements and shopping at the core of Google and Amazon’s business, I expected my Alexa and Google Nest speakers to revolutionize how I purchase daily essentials. Instead, the experience is so frustrating that after multiple attempts at making voice-based purchases part of my routine, I keep going back to shuffling between my shopping app of choice and a notepad for everything else. I don’t see that changing unless drastic changes come about.

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The Top 10 Benefits of Amazon AWS Lightsail: Why It’s a Great Choice for Businesses

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a popular cloud computing platform that offers a wide range of services to individuals and businesses alike. One of the services offered by AWS is Amazon Lightsail, which is a simplified and user-friendly way to launch and manage virtual private servers (VPS). In this article, we will discuss the benefits of using Amazon Lightsail for your business.

Cost-effective

One of the primary advantages of using Amazon Lightsail is its cost-effectiveness. The service offers a flat monthly fee for each instance, which makes it easy to predict costs and plan for your budget. Moreover, the pricing is transparent, with no hidden costs or surprises.

Lightsail Pricing

User-friendly

Amazon Lightsail is designed to be user-friendly, making it easy for even non-technical users to deploy and manage virtual private servers. The platform provides a simplified control panel that includes pre-configured software packages, such as WordPress, LAMP, and more. These packages are preconfigured, making it easy to deploy and set up a web application in minutes.

Scalable

Amazon Lightsail is designed to be scalable, which means you can easily upgrade your resources as your business grows. The platform provides a range of instance sizes to choose from, with varying CPU, RAM, and storage options. You can also scale up or down as needed, making it easy to manage your resources and costs.

Reliable

Amazon Lightsail is built on top of the AWS infrastructure, which means it benefits from AWS’s robust and reliable cloud infrastructure. This ensures that your applications and data are always available and accessible, with minimal downtime.

Secure

Amazon Lightsail provides a secure and reliable environment for your applications and data. The platform includes a range of security features, such as built-in firewalls, DDoS protection, and SSL/TLS encryption. Moreover, Lightsail instances are isolated from each other, which provides an additional layer of security.

Integrated with AWS services

Amazon Lightsail is fully integrated with other AWS services, making it easy to use Lightsail with other AWS services such as Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and more. This integration provides a comprehensive cloud computing platform, enabling you to build and run complex applications.

Quick and easy deployment

Amazon Lightsail provides a quick and easy way to deploy web applications, with pre-configured templates for popular applications such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and more. This makes it easy to deploy a web application in just a few clicks, without the need for technical knowledge.

High-performance

Amazon Lightsail instances are built on top of the latest generation of AWS infrastructure, providing high-performance and low-latency connectivity. This ensures that your applications and data are always accessible and responsive, with fast and efficient data transfer.

Easy to manage

Amazon Lightsail provides a simplified management interface, making it easy to manage your virtual private servers. The platform includes tools for monitoring your instances, configuring backups, managing DNS records, and more. Moreover, the platform provides a range of APIs and CLI tools, making it easy to automate management tasks.

Flexible

Amazon Lightsail is flexible, allowing you to choose the operating system and software stack that best suits your needs. The platform supports a range of operating systems, including Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, and more. Moreover, you can install and configure any software stack that you need, giving you complete control over your environment.

In conclusion, Amazon Lightsail is a cost-effective, user-friendly, scalable, reliable, secure, integrated, quick, high-performance, easy-to-manage, and flexible platform for deploying and managing virtual private servers. If you’re looking for a simplified and efficient way to manage your cloud computing resources, Amazon Lightsail is definitely worth considering.

Get started today with Amazon Lightsail

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Binance’s BNB Chain to Offer New Decentralized Storage System

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Binance’s BNB Chain to Offer New Decentralized Storage System

The release of the decentralized storage system’s white paper was having a modest effect on the price of other storage tokens on Wednesday. Filecoin (FIL), storj (STORJ), and arweave (AR) are now trading 2%, 5% and 6%, respectively, above their pre-announcement prices.

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The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Set Sounds Absolutely Delightful, Thanks To Rachel Brosnahan’s Adorable Pig Story

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Rachel Brosnahan playing Midge in the Season 4 trailer for Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Over the course of four seasons, and soon a fifth installment, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has managed to one-up themselves and make the scale bigger, the set pieces more extravagant and the monologues snappier. While all of this has been amazing for us viewers, one-upping yourself every time must be quite stressful, and it has been according to Rachel Brosnahan. However, she also came up with an adorable way to de-stress and help the cast and crew by hiring therapy pigs. This also goes to show just how delightful the set of this Prime Video show seems, even during stressful moments. 

Filming Season 2 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which went on to win many Emmys in 2019, the cast and crew had taken on a much bigger challenge than they did in Season 1. By traveling around the world, and upping the ante overall the stress levels were high. However, Rachel Brosnahan revealed that she had a “delightful” stress relief activity planned involving therapy pigs, truly showing how wonderful this set seems. The actress behind Midge Maisel started her story about therapy pigs by setting the scene on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, saying:  

So this is actually from our second season, we shot ten episodes during our second season, that’s the only time we ever did that, we never tried it again. We started the season in Paris, we traveled to the Catskills, we were on the move a lot. It was a really, really tough season. The crew was really tired. And toward the end of the season, someone had told me about this service in New York, where you can order therapy pigs to come to your workplace and make you feel better. And so, I brought therapy pigs to set and it was kind of incredible.



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