Amazon’s secret war on Android: The company has a plan to cure Alexa’s addiction to Google’s operating system.
Tech
By Eugene Kim | 2024-03-06T10:00:02Z
Amazon’s Alexa division is cutting costs across the board, having laid off thousands of employees and reshuffled projects over the past 18 months. Another key part of that plan is to unify Alexa’s backend technology, which is set to result in some devices moving off of the Android-based operating system the company has used for years.
Internally named “Unified Alexa Device Software,” the project is aimed at delivering a “single Alexa Device Software codebase” that will help reduce operational costs and address various performance issues, according to internal documents obtained by BI and people familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press.
The team in charge of the project expects to ultimately save almost 50% of its overhead costs, one of the documents says. Once completed, Amazon expects a faster rollout of Alexa features, improved customer experience, and less developer friction, among other benefits.
“With the unified Alexa backend, Amazon plans to more actively use a new homegrown operating system named Vega for voice assistants, smart TVs, and wearable devices,” one of the documents says. Vega is a “new portable operating system for consumer electronics developed by Amazon,” the document explains. Some of the Alexa-powered devices were already using Vega.
Amazon has tried to unify Alexa’s software stack since at least 2016, but failure to do so has only deepened existing problems, the document says. Amazon, at one point, had four different teams supporting the same voice middleware technology across different devices, causing higher operational costs and inefficiencies.
“The idea is we can build and ship the same device on cheaper technology,” one of the people familiar with the matter told BI.
The feature-parity gap between Amazon’s own Alexa devices and third-party voice assistants using Alexa has long been a problem, both internally and externally, according to the people. They said Amazon’s own devices usually got new features ahead of third-party devices, but some employees felt the technology used in Amazon’s devices was much more robust and mature than the tech found in external Alexa-powered gadgets.
The new unified Alexa foundation will significantly reduce these feature parity gaps, the internal documents predict. For example, prior to unifying the backend, one of Alexa’s wake-word-detection features existed only for the Fire OS, so Amazon had to separately build one for the Vega OS.
With the new Vega OS, Amazon is reducing its reliance on the Android-based Fire OS. But the move wasn’t necessarily motivated by ditching Google’s technology. Instead, the goal was simply to be more efficient with resources and to improve performance.
“Android-based devices are going to stick around for a while,” one of the people said.
One area that’s set to see less investment is tablets that come with Alexa capabilities. One of the people said usage of Alexa on tablets was low, given most people just looked at the screen instead of making voice commands. They said Amazon wanted to build a lighter version of Alexa on tablets so fewer resources would be used to support features.
This person added that the same thinking applied to the home robot Astro, given the low level of engagement on that device. Since the number of Astro devices in use is significantly lower than any other Amazon device, the company wants to reduce the level of investment going into enabling Alexa on the home robot.
“It’s also an acknowledgment that Alexa has not scaled the way Amazon had expected it to,” this person said.
In an email to BI, an Amazon spokesperson said the change in Alexa’s technology was part of a regular review process.
“We regularly evolve our software architecture to continuously improve Alexa for customers,” the spokesperson said. “That’s what’s happening — to suggest there’s a massive cost-cutting campaign is a gross exaggeration.”
Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip? Contact the reporter, Eugene Kim, via the encrypted-messaging apps Signal or Telegram or email. Reach out using a non-work device. Check out Business Insider’s source guide for other tips on sharing information securely.