Amazon’s latest consumer product announcement…

Amazon’s artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled Echo smart home speaker has been incredibly successful. This is the cylindrical device that many consumers know simply as “Alexa.”

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Amazon announced that it is developing a new Echo product. This one won’t be cylindrical. Instead, it will be a large touch screen that attaches to the wall. This is different from the Echo Show devices currently available. These enable users to watch shows, read recipes, or videoconference with friends or colleagues in addition to Alexa’s usual features.  Instead, this wall-mounted touch screen will serve as a smart-home control panel. Alexa will be able to respond to all our requests involving our smart appliances, doorbells, thermostats, Wi-Fi devices, lights, cameras, security systems, and even smart HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems.  Amazon’s aspiration is to embed itself deeper into our homes. That’s why it went on a smart home acquisition spree in recent years.

 In 2017, Amazon acquired Blink Home, a company that provides home security cameras. In 2018, it bought Ring. That company makes home security products including the Ring Video Doorbell. Then Amazon turned around and took a large stake in Ecobee, an early stage company that develops smart thermostats. And in 2019, Amazon acquired Eero, a company making smart home Wi-Fi systems.Each of these acquisitions gets Amazon more and more entrenched in our lives through useful and sticky products in the home. And this helps Amazon understand us and our consumption patterns better.  Here’s where this is going…

Eventually, Amazon will get to where it can predict exactly what products we need on a weekly basis. At that point, it will simply push the products out to us as it deems necessary. We’ll come home to packages on our doorstep that we never ordered but contain the things we need.  Of course, there will always be an option to return any items we don’t want. But Amazon’s AI will have already analyzed our consumption habits and determined that we would soon likely order the products ourselves. It will just beat us to the punch. 

And as the AI improves, it will be able to send products that we know we’ll find useful but have never purchased before.  This reminds me of what Google hoped to do with its Nest Hub smart home product line. However, the Nest products underperformed Google’s expectations.  The software blocked me at every turn when I tried to do something as simple as just join a Google Meet call. This kind of one-sided, all-or-nothing product design is terrible for consumers.  

On the other hand, Amazon’s smart home products are seamless and deliver great value. They set up quickly. And they don’t require consumers to share all of their contact information, the contents of their file folders and photos, and their email inboxes. That’s why Amazon, ironically, is doing a much better job of getting into our homes than Google. And while Amazon certainly has its own interests in mind here – more e-commerce, primarily – the company is far less invasive than Google.