Just hours after Amazon surprised us with more new Alexa-enabled gadgets than we can sexasia | Adult Movies Onlinecount, word broke that Facebook's voice-activated smart speaker (reportedly called "Portal") is apparently back on -- and launching as soon as next week.
Suddenly, a market that's been dominated by Amazon and Google is starting to look more interesting ... right? Well, not exactly.
I'm not trying to pick on Facebook but, of everything we've heard about the yet-to-be-revealed Portal speaker, nothing suggests that it can overcome what will likely be its biggest hurdle: that nobody trusts Facebook anymore. If you think an Alexa-enabled microwave sounds creepy, how do you think people will react to a Facebook-branded smart speaker with an AI-infused camera?
I'm not saying that one company has better or worse intentions than the other. There's plenty of reasons to be skeptical of both. But Amazon has some considerable advantages that Facebook doesn't.
SEE ALSO: Amazon just revealed its plan for total smart home dominationBy being first to the market with the original Amazon Echo more than three years ago, the company not only ensured its brand became synonymous with digital assistants, it also got us comfortable with the idea of having an always-listening speaker in our homes to begin with. That the company is now capitalizing on that trust to put Alexa in and on just about every surface it can is not surprising. It's also a strategy that's been incredibly successful.
Compare that with Facebook, which is not only coming in very late, but which has very little goodwill at this particular moment.
For starters, there's the whole Cambridge Analytica debacle, which the company is only now (sort of, kind of) beginning to recover from. Even so, trust in the company has been eroding rapidly, regardless of how many apology ads the social network runs. The fact that it delayed the Portal launch by a few months -- what some employees are dismissively calling a "brand tax," according to Cheddar -- won't change that.
Furthermore the few details that have leaked out about Portal don't sound like they'll do much to change that perception, either. Early reports indicate that the Echo Show-like speaker will have built-in face-tracking abilities so it can recognize and "follow" people around a room. (The goal is to enable better video chatting, which feels a lot like a solution searching for a problem).
Oh yeah, it's also going to cost between $300 and $400, according to Cheddar. That's at least $70 more than the new $230 Echo Show and at least $100 more than the Google Assistant-equipped Lenovo Smart Display.
Does that sound like something that will have the same mass market appeal of Amazon's Echo or even the Google Home? No, definitely not.
But even if it was priced competitively, the company has already lost many of its users' trust. And a face-tracking smart speaker isn't going to change that.
Topics Amazon Facebook Gadgets
Astronomers find a signal from the first stars in the universePeople are sharing their favourite Pokémon memories and it's a total nostalgia fest'Black Panther' breaks into the all'Black Panther' breaks into the all'Black Panther' writer TaJimmy Kimmel is moved to tears after Ellen unveils a surprise for his son'Black Panther' breaks into the allLittleThings shuts down, citing Facebook algorithm changeHere's why posters replacing white actors with black actors appeared in LondonAir New Zealand's controversial new safety video goes to AntarcticaEU gives tech companies strict new antiUnreleased teenage Amy Winehouse demo emerges, titled "My Own Way"Twitch streamer admits to killing someone's dog on purposeViral app Vero will stay free 'until further notice'People are sharing their favourite Pokémon memories and it's a total nostalgia festThis year's Best Picture nominees deserve to be seen as classic comic stripsMan finds genius method for decorating the hole in his office wallPhotos, videos show extent of nor'easter flooding across East CoastWaltonchain token crashes following sketchy tweetMicrosoft investigates Xbox One bug revealing gamers' real names Portraits and Perennials: Art by Robert Kushner Charlotte Brontë’s Favorite Critic This Guy Really, Really, Really Loved Books—Maybe Too Much Staff Picks: Guy de Maupassant, Gabrielle Bell, Aracelis Girmay The History of Public Sculpture Is a Long and Sad One Readability vs. Difficulty (That Classic Debate) Staff Picks: Raymond Pettibon, Jaume Plensa, Carlos Fonseca Sentinel Species: Meditation on a Life of Birding The Puppets Are Doing Just Fine, Thanks for Asking Paula Fox, 1923–2017 A Guide to “Getting” Rumi Ben Lerner Interviews Alexander Kluge Having Trouble Sleeping? Read This. Revisited: Mystery and Melancholy of a Street This February 14, Send Vinegar Valentines to Everyone You Hate It’s Not Magic, It’s Just a Camera The Making of a Comics Biography, Part 3 Golden Cicada: Drinking at Jersey City’s Baijiu Bar On Sanctuary Cities: What I Learned Playing Soccer in New Orleans Maya Angelou with George Plimpton
2.45s , 10133.6171875 kb
Copyright © 2025 Powered by 【sexasia | Adult Movies Online】,Exquisite Information Network