Are Amazon and Alibaba going to dominate our lives in ways that Google and Apple never will?
Some of you may have recently seen the announcement of this device. This is obviously just a prototype piece of paper, because it doesn’t actually exist yet. It’s called Echo. It’s new from Amazon. It is Siri inside a cylinder. BTW: You can request an invite here: http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo.
So instead of having Siri and advice like that in your phone, it just sits on a counter or a shelf in your home.
It is always connected to Wi-Fi. It is always listening.
All you have to do is say Alexa, which is the name that they have chosen for it — I think you can change that if you want — say, “Alexa, what time is it?
Alexa, what’s the temperature in Austin? Alexa, what’s the score of the Cowboys game? Alexa, please play music from Taylor Swift.” Pretty interesting, pretty fantastic. Always around, always on.
You can also say, and this is not an accident, “Hey Alexa, add paper towels to our shopping list.”
Now, at launch, it just creates a shopping list on a companion app. So it just says paper towels, just like a notepad you’d have on an iPhone.
But folks, here’s where it gets interesting and insidious, because it does not take a mental giant to understand that the next step is, “Hey Alexa, send me some paper towels. Hey Alexa, send me the new Taylor Swift album. Hey Alexa, I need a new case for my iPhone. Hey Alexa, what do you have to offer in terms of shelves?”
Very quickly, ladies and gentlemen, a real time, always listening, always cataloging, e-commerce engine will be present on your shelf or on your coffee table in your home. Things are about to get crazy up in here.
Now on one hand, that is extraordinarily useful. I can just say, “Hey Alexa, send me pizza,” and either Amazon will bring me pizza on a drone, or maybe they’ll have some sort of a deal with Domino’s or somebody else, or they’ll pass those orders off, and Alexa will just be the middleman. But one way or the other, commerce is ultimately the key to our hearts.
Commerce is the killer app.
Yeah, it’s amazing that Siri and Google and people like that with Google Voice can give us real-time driving directions, or what have you, or music, or weather, or temperature, or stocks, or football scores.
That’s neat. But you know what?
Whoever controls commerce, controls the household. That’s why if you look out forward three years, five years, my money, in terms of the dominant, the dominant organization in how our lives are going to be structured, is Amazon and Alibaba, because they own commerce.
Sure Apple’s got Apple Pay, and they want to try and make it so that we can swipe our phones and pay for everything, and that’s interesting when you’re out of your house.
But ladies and gentlemen, what is more interesting? Going to the store and waving your phone to pay for something, or sit here in a T-shirt and a beanie and say, “Hey Alexa, send me a book about marketing,” and it shows up the next day? It goes from one click to zero click. And that is both amazing, and I think super, super scary.