Why Amazon's most iconic product is losing the tech giant huge sums of money

One of Amazon's most iconic products has turned out to be a major money drain, newly unearthed documents show. The retail giant invested in Alexa voice technology in its relatively cheap Echo speaker products in the hopes people would use it to order more products online. But this is said to have backfired dramatically - with new market research showing customers see the AI voice assistant as a secretary and mostly use it for free apps like setting their alarms and checking the weather. 'We worried we've hired 10,000 people and we've built a smart timer,' a former senior employee told the Wall Street Journal. Sources shared internal documents with the newspaper showing that between 2017 and 2021, Amazon suffered more than 25 billion in losses from its devices business.