Alexa can now tell you the phone number of your favorite store

Amazon has been working to make its voice assistant more Alexa more useful to users, and this latest feature will certainly help with that. The company is adding the hours, phone numbers and addresses of over a million businesses to Alexa's database.

Now, according to Bloomberg, users can simply ask Alexa to tell them the phone number or hours of a store, rather than having to look them up on their phones or computers. As long as your address is entered into the Amazon Alexa app, the skill will provide localized data.

This data results from a partnership with Yext, Inc., which stores information about 1.2 million business. The company also provides data to Alphabet's Google, which is the company that Amazon is targeting with this new push.

Recently, Google announced a new program called Shopping Actions that would, in essence, promote retail brands other than Amazon through its searches. Companies such as Target, Home Depot, Walmart and Costco are participating. Product search results show up in a dedicated sidebar, which people are more likely to click than the regular list. A report from Reuters claimed that this was an effort to counter the popularity of Amazon's Alexa for shopping. It seems as though the fight between these two online giants is ramping up.

Source: Bloomberg



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