Some called it a useless gimmick others pointed to it as evidence of Amazon’s Orwellian tendencies. When it launched, Amazon’s critics jumped to mock the company. People were moving on to new projects or quitting altogether. In the home stretch of the speaker’s development, the Fire Phone was bombing, and the lab was in a period of reckoning. Amazon had launched the Fire Phone, its competitor to the iPhone, in July. Making matters worse was the overall atmosphere at Lab126 that summer. “It would lead to so much additional work.” “We spent so much time trying to anticipate what Jeff would do or say, and read into little words he would say in meetings,” said one former employee. Generally, the engineers and product managers at Lab126 quelled their own dissent before it reached Bezos, instead concentrating on giving the boss what they thought he wanted. A common opinion within Lab126 was that the project was hurtling toward a potential disaster: The speakers would wake upon hearing Amazon ads on television and commence buying random stuff from the Internet. One of the two words being considered was “Alexa.” Bezos thought the best word would be “Amazon.” This presented a challenge, because people say that word a lot. A core feature of the device is a “wake word” that cues it to begin taking voice commands when spoken. Bezos, on the other hand, was strongly in favor. Many people who worked at Lab126, Amazon’s hardware division, hated the name, according to two former employees.
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