Amazon Taps Xbox Co-Founder To Develop 'Breakthrough' Consumer Products (cnbc.com) 25
Amazon has launched a new innovation-focused team called ZeroOne, led by Xbox co-creator J Allard, to develop breakthrough consumer products across hardware and software. CNBC reports: The ZeroOne team is spread across Seattle, San Francisco and Sunnyvale, California, and is focused on both hardware and software projects, according to job postings from the past month. The name is a nod to its mission of developing emerging product ideas from conception to launch, or "zero to one." [...] The new group is being led by J Allard, who spent 19 years at Microsoft, most recently as technology chief of consumer products, a role he left in 2010, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was a key architect of the Xbox game console, as well as the Zune, a failed iPod competitor.
Allard joined Amazon in September, and the company confirmed at the time that he would be part of the devices and services team under Panos Panay, who left Microsoft for Amazon in 2023 to lead the group. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed Allard oversees ZeroOne but declined to comment further on the group's work. The job postings provide few specific details about what ZeroOne is building, though one listing references working on "conceiving, designing, and bringing to market computer vision techniques for a new smart-home product." Another post for a senior customer insights manager in San Francisco says the job entails owning "the methodology and execution of concept testing and early feedback for ZeroOne programs." "You'll be part of a team that embraces design thinking, rapid experimentation, and building to learn," the description says. "If you're excited about working in small, nimble teams to create entirely new product categories and thrive in the ambiguity of breakthrough innovation, we want to talk to you."
Amazon has pulled in staffers from other business units that have experience developing innovative technologies, including its Alexa voice assistant, Luna cloud gaming service and Halo sleep tracker, according to Linkedin profiles of ZeroOne employees. The head of a projection mapping startup called Lightform that Amazon acquired is helping lead the group. While Amazon is expanding this particular corner of its devices group, the company is scaling back other areas of the sprawling devices and services division.
Allard joined Amazon in September, and the company confirmed at the time that he would be part of the devices and services team under Panos Panay, who left Microsoft for Amazon in 2023 to lead the group. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed Allard oversees ZeroOne but declined to comment further on the group's work. The job postings provide few specific details about what ZeroOne is building, though one listing references working on "conceiving, designing, and bringing to market computer vision techniques for a new smart-home product." Another post for a senior customer insights manager in San Francisco says the job entails owning "the methodology and execution of concept testing and early feedback for ZeroOne programs." "You'll be part of a team that embraces design thinking, rapid experimentation, and building to learn," the description says. "If you're excited about working in small, nimble teams to create entirely new product categories and thrive in the ambiguity of breakthrough innovation, we want to talk to you."
Amazon has pulled in staffers from other business units that have experience developing innovative technologies, including its Alexa voice assistant, Luna cloud gaming service and Halo sleep tracker, according to Linkedin profiles of ZeroOne employees. The head of a projection mapping startup called Lightform that Amazon acquired is helping lead the group. While Amazon is expanding this particular corner of its devices group, the company is scaling back other areas of the sprawling devices and services division.
New Amazon Smart-home Products (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, no thanks.
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Hey... they're still better than Google's smart home products. Not that you really need to try very hard to beat the voice recognition of a Google Home device in 2025.
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I don't want any corporation in my home listening and recording everything I do. Can you say creepy?
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Is bandwidth, processing and storage free in your universe? Because it's not in the universe where Amazon operates.
Fire up a Wireshark session on your router's connection and watch the traffic (the devices' MAC address is helpfully printed on them.) There will be regular pings back to the mother ship, until it hears the wake word. Then it buffers the next phrase it hears and sends the encrypted compressed bundle to be analyzed. After that it's back to pings until a response comes in.
Perhaps if you were
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Uh huh, ok. However, trust is non-existent, so it's still a no-go for me.
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*sigh*
Logic and easily verifiable evidence will always be trumped by religious belief.
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You equate my wanting to avoid consumer fuckery with religious belief? You're an asshat.
Amazon is only capable of enshitification (Score:5, Insightful)
We're fighting everyone else (Score:2)
They're not thinking. They're calculating. (Score:2)
I recently had a displeasure of ordering something on Amazon. In my very specific search I was barraged by unrelated sponsored listings on top of that video ad for another product was displayed in line. I didn't end up buying anything as the result. What are they thinking making buying things so annoying?
They're not thinking. They're calculating the number of consumers that actually care to your level about the user experience against the revenue they're getting from said sponsored ad. And that calculation hasn't even come close to a give-a-shit alarm.
Not to mention they can't hear you over the deafening sounds of an endless stream of 1-click revenue. As if any mega-corp has to actually give a shit about the concerns of the 0.0001% of their customers.
Malware you pay for (Score:3)
Every single one of Amazon's hardware products is used to siphon your data and bilge pump ads and product placements to you.
You can argue that's true for all of Amazon's properties at this point.
They've become a behemoth of a company like Microsoft did in the 90s - starting in earnest about 2 years ago, based on what I've seen from those who work there. Their culture has changed and the leadership has all but abandoned the leadership principles.
I'll create a breakthrough product (Score:2)
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I worked at Amazon for nine years, it was extremely interesting. The company has so much cash that "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" is a valid business model. Anywhere else that I have worked the motto 'Every day is Day One' would be mindless executive-speak, but at Amazon that's the way that big chunks of the company works. Current CEO Andrew Jassey took AWS from the days of "Let's try this, hold my beer!" to the 800-pound gorilla of cloud computing. It was an incredibly interesting job, an
How to Breakthrough 101. (Score:2)
(Manager) ”We need you to develop ‘breakthrough’ products.”
(You) “Uhh, what exactly do you mean by that?”
(Manager) ”You know, breakthrough! Stuff that has pizazz. That Viral thaang. It’s got Awesomeness. A solid piece of flair!”
(You) ”So, we have a billion-dollar Shit budget and a Wall certified by IMAX to throw it against. Got it.”
Breakthrough Consumer Products (Score:2)
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A "Breakthrough Consumer Product" is something some bloated corporation thinks everyone will want, wants everyone to want, needs everyone to want, but that nobody wants.
You forgot the last part. You'll get it anyway, sold at a loss. Which will ironically make the stock price go up.
And we fucking wonder why Wall Street is a house of cards again.
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You'll get it anyway, sold at a loss. Which will ironically make the stock price go up.
This being Amazon, I believe the obligatory description is "they lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume". That's why people assured me Amazon was going to go out of business in the late 1990s.
He was a key architect of Zune..... (Score:2)
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the Zune, a failed iPod competitor. Who wants that on their resume. !
Anyone who assumes the reader will allow for historical context.
The Zune was released in 2006. The iTunes ecosystem was firmly established, and for many people, it was a solid solution to create a library of songs, regardless of whether they were purchased from the iTunes Music Store, ripped from CDs, or they came from Limewire. The 5th-gen iPod that played video files had already been out for a year, and iTunes already had movie and TV show downloads available, using a library and interface paradigm that l
'Breakthrough'? (Score:2)
It's not like the original "we want a consol
Sometimes CEO'ing seems to easy (Score:2)
"Hey hire a guy with a history making cool stuff and tell him to design some cool stuff we can sell!"
Sure wish I had business acumen like that :-)
Here's a simple rule (Score:2)
If these "breakthrough" consumer products require the cloud, run away
The cloud is a trap