There was another post[0] on here today about Amazon losing $10B on Alexa this year. The only other big player is Google who I assume must also run the division at a big loss - at least on the hardware side of things as I've got loads of their devices dotted around the house most were given to me free or at a stupidly low cost (£20 each). Even the ones like this with a full colour screen I've only paid £49 for.

It's an interesting market that I don't think either has figured out too well. Anecdotally, I've not really seen them used for shopping or even really shopping lists and the search model doesn't seem quite as lucrative as if someone used their phone or computer to search.

The one thing they do seem to do well in is as an introduction to - and hub for - the smarthome but I struggle to see how that will make these big subsides viable.

Which brings us back to this. A bit ahead of it's time perhaps but if Amazon/Google pull back their subsidies then this kind of thing might be where we have to go. I'd be happier not using Google Home and have mostly moved to zigbee switches with home assistant to control now anyway. Maybe voice control was a bit of a flash in the pan?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33700792

Google to some degree can justify it better considering that Assistant is ALSO present in Android

They need to have some sort of version existing to compete with Siri, and can also shoehorn integrations that wouldn't quite work for Amazon

Were not for this[0] ever expanding page, Assistant seems like the more reliable option

[0] https://killedbygoogle.com/

Which is essentially a Raspberry Pi 4 with an LCD display.

However, not wanting to spend time and money integrating the hardware and the software and building an enclosure around it I'd say it's still a fair deal.

Amazon is merely selling devices at cost, which is why they're losing $10 billion a year on Alexa. All this is probably going to stop soon so people end up with useless devices. Hopefully hackers will be able to run MyCroft on them.

Under the specs, all I saw for display was:

>4.3″ IPS wide-viewing angle, full color, touchsceen

Were you able to find more information somewhere else about it being crt?

He didn't say it's a CRT, he said it's a 'CRT looking thing', which it definitely is with the thick extension behind the monitor.

Personally I do like the design but I'm quite fond of Fallout/Alien style retro displays so YMMV. As a personal assistant type thing the original vertical prototype with eyes seemed better though.

He said CRT looking, I assume to mean “old-fashioned and bulky/boxy”, not that it actually was a CRT based display.

They actually have some data for you here to give you a sense of scale:

https://mycroft.ai/mark-ii-status/

This isn't a CRT.

I realize it's not an actual CRT, it looks like a CRT.

Sorry if I ask, but what does CRT mean?

Cathode Ray Tube, the kind of monitor/television that existed before LCD screens became popular.