They are refunding for them. But in my opinion, you only get a couple of these un-launches before you get a reputation like Google has.
Amazon has cancelled lots of consumer stuff in the past (the Alexa buttons or whatever they were) but cancelling business-facing things is new. Businesses are much more cancellation averse than forgetful consumers have proven to be.
In fairness to Amazon, my understanding is that existing Dash buttons haven't been sunset, they just stopped selling them. The one consumer device that I do know that they bricked was the Dash Wand, which was like a handheld Dash Button but you ordered with voice (like Alexa) or barcode. I think very few people actually had one, though.
> you only get a couple of these un-launches before you get a reputation like Google has.
That's just not true. Companies cancel things all the time. Obviously these weren't exactly selling well -- what else is a company supposed to do?
The fact that literally no other company has the reputation for cancelling things that Google has, should tell you that their reputation is something very specific to Google, for whatever reason.
I think there is a pretty big difference between canceling a weird niche product that probably wouldn’t exist anywhere else vs. canceling your fourth basic messaging service to replace it with a nearly identical clone. I am happy Amazon shoots for the moon on devices and hope they continue to do so.
I've actually seen one of these in person (the guy had it for free because he knew someone at Amazon working on the personal dogfood version).
I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was actually for, and neither could he, as it was basically solely a party trick for him. They don't even vacuum floors like a Roomba does!
The linked article talks about security patrols or whatever, but simply installing security cameras is cheaper and better. A robot obviously rolling along the floor is easy to avoid or to disable.
I also know someone at Amazon who “dogfooded” one! I saw one, single, semi-valid use case, which is that it was a decent way to intermittently check up on your pets without setting up multiple cameras… but obviously not worth it at nearly $3,000 with tax.
I personally could see a use for a mobile security camera, but it needs to be more agile and capable than basically a camera on a table lamp with wheels. Give me a robot dog that can get throughout my house when I'm away and I'd get one. Give it teeth and claws and I'm buying 20.
Working backwards, customer centricity, etc. etc. from their principles and they couldn’t figure out this was going to be a dud?
Maybe it’s cost prohibitive to produce something like this robot at tiny scale, but it seems like the best way to develop would be to identify a few partner businesses, super serve them well and then sell to general public.
Stripe is famous for developing products that way. E.g. stripe subscriptions were built in concert with Atlasian and other companies, then released to everybody [1].
To be fair, maybe that’s what they are doing with their home product. And to be doubly fair, building a subscription billing product is far more straightforward than introducing a new category.
>Working backwards, customer centricity, etc. etc. from their principles and they couldn’t figure out this was going to be a dud?
As someone who worked inside Amazon, the LPs and particular "customer obsession" are quite a lot more malleable than they might appear. For example, a PM might pitch "ads by default in Prime Video" as quote-unquote customer obsessed because ads inform customers about products that they could use.
ex-AWS here. No, plenty of projects get built and released without a truly rigorous working backwards process. PRFAQs (working backwards document) do get written, but wouldn't say PMs and GMs always have the highest bar for being evidence driven.
> Stripe is famous for developing products that way. E.g. stripe subscriptions were built in concert with Atlasian and other companies, then released to everybody
They’re just using the standard startup playbook here
This type of thing is bad for the internal innovator who must expend political capital to get their organization to try new things. “Hey boss, Amazon has this new thing we should try.”
Burn those people a few times and they’re gone forever.
Bad for innovative product engineers at companies like Amazon, too. Pretty demoralising to have your product canned on a whim after years of effort to bring it to release. Maybe it’s better to just work on boring things, don’t stick your neck out…
Yep. It's unwise to embark on new ventures half-heartedly, without thinking ahead to their market potential, or without derisking them by experimenting before going into production, only to then yank the rug out from the team so quickly. It's Google-like dilettancy, or like Meta's Portal and Workplace.
Discontinuing the product is one thing, but intentionally bricking the existing ones (and leaving it up to the former owners to dispose of the resulting e-waste) seems uncalled for to me.
These devices are heavily dependent on software running on servers in Amazon's cloud. They're being bricked only because those servers are being turned off because continuing to maintain the server software would be expensive and not to Amazon's gain.
An invite only product with extremely meager sales realized to have been about as worthwhile as a brick being fully refunded with $300 extra plus cost of recycling covered may not be a hacker's utopia but seems like a pretty good option to me. Much better than imagining any of these businesses were going to hack the failed gear into something useful instead.
> and leaving it up to the former owners to dispose of the resulting e-waste
"Amazon's email to customers encourages owners to recycle Astro for Business through the Amazon Recycling Program, with Amazon covering associated costs."
I wonder how much we're rushing to defend the three businesses that bought a total of 10 of them, most of them connected to Amazon anyhow, or some similar number.
I have a hard time imagining Amazon is so much as shutting down 1000 devices here.
Seems it requires cloud services, so once Amazon shuts these down it’s as good as bricked. Otherwise they have to run the cloud forever, or reprogram them not to need cloud.
I had a cat feeder that required cloud, and when that company went out of business I had a brick and no refund. (Yeah I was crazy to buy the thing, but I had my reasons and knew the risks.) That’s the risk with these cloudy devices.
If someone sends me one of these dead units I'd be happy to work on creating OSS software to run it ... And perhaps it would be a great challenge for our FIRST robotics team during the off-season!
> Per Amazon's emails, the company is still keen to release the home version of Astro
Maybe they find it easier to convince consumers to let amazon spy on them and their homes than it is to convince businesses to let amazon spy on what happens in the office, or maybe the data they were collecting from businesses doesn't seem like it's be as valuable to them as the data they'll collect by putting a mobile camera and microphone in households.
This is going to be the new norm from big tech firms. After the massive layoffs there's just no capacity left for these quixotic speculative products inside major tech companies. What remains of their labor force is focusing on their core business areas.
The last these bets is AI, which already has Wall Street recoiling at the cost.
My employer exists because one day Amazon didn’t feel like supporting their warehouse robot b2b anymore. I have a sense that they do this kind of thing to use companies as Guinea pigs. They experiment and then abandon the product and take the lessons elsewhere.
That was a shock in the warehousing industry. Many companies make equipment for automated warehouses, and those are long-term commitments for the buyer. To have a key supplier bought out by a competitor, and external customers then cut off was a new thing.
Amazon could reduce this PR disaster by organising to give returned Astros to school programming clubs. Along with a way to hack the firmware, of course.
This really ought not be allowed. If you take a product off the market and stop supporting it, you should release the code and support information to enable people who bought it to keep it viable. Subscription models and clever contractual arrangements are bullshit fig leaves for companies trying to have their cake and eat it too.
They have plans to release related products for the home.
So no, they shouldn't be obligated to release the code, because obviously that's code that may be greatly reused, and they don't exactly want to help out competitors (nor should they be obligated to).
Also, they're refunding the devices entirely (with an additional credit) and taking them back for recycling. So they seem to be doing 100% the right things here.
will the robots receive a self-destruct command (real bricking), or will required external APIs be shut down (effectively bricking, but with a possibility of third-party service resurrection) ?
At this point sell-brick-refund is starting to sound like a capital-raising model. Get cash and customer data and maybe some other buy in and then return it after 1 year. Keep profits.
Is anyone surprised? This part of Amazon has been setting money on fire for years. It hasn’t stopped the people involved from being rewarded though. Amazon employees complain about how the teams in this part of the company get essentially all the headcount or resources they request and build up giant teams that do busy work and get promoted. But they’ve failed to build even one sustainable business. For those who got promoted, this part doesn’t matter - they can just move teams or companies and keep their undeserved titles.
reminds me of the Amazon Cloud Cam product. I had over a hundred of those cameras on my rentals, and in one day there useless. Just like how Google is found to be doing this kind of behavior in the past, Amazon now too is the new brand not to trust with any long term investment.
[+] [-] thrtythreeforty|1 year ago|reply
Amazon has cancelled lots of consumer stuff in the past (the Alexa buttons or whatever they were) but cancelling business-facing things is new. Businesses are much more cancellation averse than forgetful consumers have proven to be.
[+] [-] bastawhiz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|1 year ago|reply
That's just not true. Companies cancel things all the time. Obviously these weren't exactly selling well -- what else is a company supposed to do?
The fact that literally no other company has the reputation for cancelling things that Google has, should tell you that their reputation is something very specific to Google, for whatever reason.
[+] [-] qubex|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] FireBeyond|1 year ago|reply
Out of garbage bags? Press the button. Out of dishwasher tabs? Press another button. Rinse aid? Same.
[+] [-] ObscureMind|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] itsdrewmiller|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] AzzyHN|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 999900000999|1 year ago|reply
Would of been nice for them to open source the SDK too.
[+] [-] CydeWeys|1 year ago|reply
I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was actually for, and neither could he, as it was basically solely a party trick for him. They don't even vacuum floors like a Roomba does!
The linked article talks about security patrols or whatever, but simply installing security cameras is cheaper and better. A robot obviously rolling along the floor is easy to avoid or to disable.
[+] [-] avree|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] UberFly|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] banish-m4|1 year ago|reply
What is it you say you do here?
[+] [-] ec109685|1 year ago|reply
Maybe it’s cost prohibitive to produce something like this robot at tiny scale, but it seems like the best way to develop would be to identify a few partner businesses, super serve them well and then sell to general public.
Stripe is famous for developing products that way. E.g. stripe subscriptions were built in concert with Atlasian and other companies, then released to everybody [1].
To be fair, maybe that’s what they are doing with their home product. And to be doubly fair, building a subscription billing product is far more straightforward than introducing a new category.
[1] https://www.lennyspodcast.com/building-a-culture-of-excellen...
[+] [-] hbosch|1 year ago|reply
As someone who worked inside Amazon, the LPs and particular "customer obsession" are quite a lot more malleable than they might appear. For example, a PM might pitch "ads by default in Prime Video" as quote-unquote customer obsessed because ads inform customers about products that they could use.
Just a hypothetical scenario of course.
[+] [-] nextworddev|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] teaearlgraycold|1 year ago|reply
They’re just using the standard startup playbook here
[+] [-] ungreased0675|1 year ago|reply
Burn those people a few times and they’re gone forever.
[+] [-] Reason077|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] banish-m4|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jjmarr|1 year ago|reply
https://killedbymicrosoft.info/
Skype for Business is still supported!
[+] [-] lisper|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] CydeWeys|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zamadatix|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|1 year ago|reply
"Amazon's email to customers encourages owners to recycle Astro for Business through the Amazon Recycling Program, with Amazon covering associated costs."
[+] [-] jerf|1 year ago|reply
I have a hard time imagining Amazon is so much as shutting down 1000 devices here.
[+] [-] massysett|1 year ago|reply
I had a cat feeder that required cloud, and when that company went out of business I had a brick and no refund. (Yeah I was crazy to buy the thing, but I had my reasons and knew the risks.) That’s the risk with these cloudy devices.
[+] [-] gusmd|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] oidar|1 year ago|reply
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/20/23415167/amazon-glow-sup...
[+] [-] smoyer|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] autoexec|1 year ago|reply
Maybe they find it easier to convince consumers to let amazon spy on them and their homes than it is to convince businesses to let amazon spy on what happens in the office, or maybe the data they were collecting from businesses doesn't seem like it's be as valuable to them as the data they'll collect by putting a mobile camera and microphone in households.
[+] [-] spamizbad|1 year ago|reply
The last these bets is AI, which already has Wall Street recoiling at the cost.
[+] [-] Waterluvian|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|1 year ago|reply
That was a shock in the warehousing industry. Many companies make equipment for automated warehouses, and those are long-term commitments for the buyer. To have a key supplier bought out by a competitor, and external customers then cut off was a new thing.
[+] [-] 1oooqooq|1 year ago|reply
please, tell me someone had an armed response Astro video somewhere
[+] [-] foxylad|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Finnucane|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] noisy_boy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ysacfanboi|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] BLKNSLVR|1 year ago|reply
Amazon have googled Astro robots.
[+] [-] anigbrowl|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|1 year ago|reply
So no, they shouldn't be obligated to release the code, because obviously that's code that may be greatly reused, and they don't exactly want to help out competitors (nor should they be obligated to).
Also, they're refunding the devices entirely (with an additional credit) and taking them back for recycling. So they seem to be doing 100% the right things here.
[+] [-] duxup|1 year ago|reply
Amazon is doing just that (and giving them an Amazon credit on top of the refund).
[+] [-] ionwake|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] awestley|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Eduard|1 year ago|reply
will the robots receive a self-destruct command (real bricking), or will required external APIs be shut down (effectively bricking, but with a possibility of third-party service resurrection) ?
[+] [-] whycome|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] blackeyeblitzar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] shermantanktop|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jijji|1 year ago|reply