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“Alexa, why do we keep buying you?”

    When Amazon released Alexa in 2014, the company had big dreams about the technology. The voice assistant, the company suggested, could succeed smartphones as the next essential consumer interface.

    Alexa, which was embedded in Amazon’s voice-activated Echo smart speakers, quickly became one of the most popular voice assistants, alongside Apple’s Siri and Google’s Assistant.

    But nearly a decade later, questions have arisen about the usefulness of voice assistants, including how often people use Alexa to purchase items or purchase subscriptions. In November, Amazon began corporate layoffs, some of which targeted the division that makes Alexa and the Echo speakers.

    An Amazon representative referred to comments his executives have made that the company is not giving up on Alexa and will continue to develop new features for it.

    We decided to ask readers how they use and use Alexa and how the technology fits into their lives. Nearly 200 people in the United States and Europe responded.

    Those who relied on the voice assistant said they mainly used it for everyday tasks like setting timers and checking the weather. Many said they had grown attached to Alexa and missed it when they were gone. Most said they didn’t use Alexa to help them shop. Others told us, just as emphatically, that they would never use an Alexa device.

    Here is a selection of the responses in the readers’ own words, edited and condensed for clarity.

    Susan Jackson lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington. She has two Alexa devices.

    I’m 73, live alone, and I use Alexa every day to tell me the weather, turn on the lights, tell me what time it is abroad so I can call people there, and to cook. Many cooking problems solved by Alexa. She helps me cut down on prescriptions; she patiently tells me how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon.

    I use it for some reading lights and ALWAYS for my Christmas tree. Nothing more annoying than crawling under your tree to turn it on and off.

    If I were to meet someone, he or she should fit into my life. They should love my house, my dogs, my Alexa, my drawing, my friends…or they can go to hell!

    David Webster lives in Cornwall, England, with his wife and their three children. He said they use their Alexa devices several times a day.

    Many, many basic things we use it for. Without it we would be lost.

    They are things like timers. I know that if the oven is on, at least one Alexa timer will go off. When Janine, my wife, is cooking something, many of her recipes come from American cookbooks and she has to convert them to the metric system.

    I could do it on the phone. But I have wet hands, or my wife has flour on her hands. We open the oven. I don’t want to touch another device – talking to it is so convenient.

    If we’re having a discussion around the dinner table and she’s in the next room, just yell “Alexa…”

    Elizabeth lives in Minneapolis. She asked not to use her last name to protect her mother’s privacy. Elizabeth doesn’t use Alexa in her own home, but she has two devices with screens in her mother’s apartment. She and her sister use the Alexa app on their phones to manage their mother’s devices remotely.

    My mom has dementia and Alexa allows us to keep her safe, give her company, brighten up her days with music – the list goes on. It’s no exaggeration to say it helps us keep her out of a nursing home.

    We mainly use the app to make “Announcements” which are sentences we type into the app and then the machine says aloud. We are using this feature at the moment and also on a repeat schedule. The Echo device also displays the announcement text on the screen for my mom to read (a big help). Examples are small announcements about the weather and the like that keep her company. Having a warm voice in the room with her seems to give her a sense of camaraderie that the phone doesn’t have.

    Using the app’s “Drop In” feature and our iPhone cameras, we can show up on one of her Echo devices (with the help of additional Blink cameras, we can see which room she’s in) and initiate a call without her having to do anything on her end. We use this if she has left the phone off the hook or if we feel it is necessary or helpful for her to see us.

    We also use the “Routines” feature to control the lights in my mom’s apartment. According to her doctor, it’s important to keep her home well lit to manage her confusion and avoid naps during the day. The routines feature helps us avoid calling to remind her of activities.

    Maria Kinaman lives in Miami with her husband and two young daughters. They have six Alexa devices.

    Alexa feels like she’s on duty right now. We use it too much for music, as well as a timer, for the weather, to play white noise, and we’ve synced it to our home security system and use it to lock our doors and set the alarm. However, I have not once made a purchase from it.

    I’ve taken Alexa on vacations longer than two days.

    Brendan T. Freeman lives in Burien, Washington, with his two dogs. He has 60 devices in his house that are controlled by Alexa, including lights, fans, and heaters.

    I wake up at 3:30 every morning to drink coffee and read The New York Times. I walk into the kitchen and say the wake word – “shake” – which turns on and dims three light fixtures (one in the kitchen so I can see, one in the living room, and one in the bedroom). The coffee is freshly brewed, turned on by the Alexa app at 3:20.

    As I lay in my bed with my laptop reading the news, the Alexa app turns on a Pandora light jazz station at 4am. When I oversleep, the music serves as my alarm clock.

    When I first sit down in my office at 7 a.m., I look at my calendar and ask Echo to set alarms 10 minutes before any scheduled meetings I have. If there’s something I need to remember during the day (buy dog ​​food, call the doctor), I ask Alexa to set a reminder at a specific time.

    When I go to bed, I say, “Echo bedtime,” and all the lights in the apartment go out.

    Yiu Wai Chan lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children, ages 11 and 7. They own 13 Alexa devices and nine other smart devices.

    We use it to turn our living room lights on and off and to occasionally drop by (talking from our phone to the Alexa Dot devices) from the car to check in on our kids.

    We do not intend to shop with it as we really want to research our purchases and see items in person or at least in videos or photos online before purchasing.

    Michael Redmond lives with his husband in Rehoboth Beach, Del. They have seven Alexa devices and three Google smart devices.

    We have a Wyze camera pointed at the sump pump in our crawl space, the feed of which we display on an Alexa Show. It is inconvenient to physically go down to the basement to check the pump.

    We don’t use it to shop on Amazon. It is too difficult to compare prices using the device.

    We take an Alexa Dot with us when we travel.

    Kerry Hoffman lives in Brooklyn with her husband and cat. They have four Alexa devices.

    My husband has set up automatic blinds controlled by Alexa. Not only can she fully open and close the blinds, she can also raise and lower the blinds. We say, “Alexa, set the blinds in the living room to 3 percent,” and she opens the curtains so we can see outside.

    Aaron Lawless lives in Springfield, Virginia, with his wife and two children.

    In an age of massive hacks and data breaches, it’s not worth the risk to have an always-listening device connected to the internet in my house.

    My wife agrees with me because she doesn’t want Alexa, but my 10-year-old has said it might be nice to have Alexa. He overhears his friends talking about having Alexa, and he’s sold on the coolness of it. However, Mom and I agree that it’s not happening.

    Heather Keever lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and 15-year-old son.

    It’s very important to keep Alexa, Echo, etc. devices out of our family. We have returned those who were “gifted” to us; we don’t want them.

    I tried my brother’s Alexa when we visited to set an oven timer. It worked, but setting the actual timer on the oven worked just as well (perhaps easier).

    I am not willing to give up my privacy for things I can easily do without.

    Richard Feury lives in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, with his wife.

    Don’t need one. Don’t want one. Wish they would go away.

    I’m not so lazy that I want a machine to turn on the lights, lock the doors, or switch from Hulu to Netflix for me. My legs and fingers still work fine.

    And I don’t want a device like Alexa being used by companies to learn about my habits, lifestyle, political affiliations, etc. I value what little privacy I have left, and Alexa undercuts that.