“Somebody might look at this and say, wait a second, why does Amazon care that a bot is buying? It's revenue regardless. And then you look at their income statement and you see, no, wait a second, Amazon brought in $68 billion in revenue last year from advertising. And bots don't have eyeballs. And that is the fundamental issue.”
GeekWire · September 2026
At a GeekWire live show, Bishop had been shopping through Meta's agent Muse, which Amazon is blocking, and had just read out what Muse itself said when he told it about the block. His answer for why Amazon cares is the ad business, and he adds that Amazon is trying to turn Alexa into the same kind of consumer chatbot.
Transcript
But then I explained to Muse what was going on. And I said we were going to be talking about Muse on the podcast. And I said, what would you want me to say? What would be your message about yourself and this situation? And Muse said, the one thing I would want said about me, I'm not blocked because I did something shady. I'm blocked because two giants haven't agreed on the rules yet. And the customer is the one stuck in the middle. I was like, whoa. Yeah, kind of profound in an almost human way. That really struck me. Yeah. Creepy or inspiring, John.
Yeah, I guess it's both because it's right on the mark. You see power shifting so radically in the tech ecosystem right now where a company like Amazon, Meta on top in the cloud era, and now playing a little bit of defense here, it seems, as it relates to meta. And I just think that's pretty interesting how the tables have turned.
Now, somebody might look at this and say, wait a second, why does Amazon care that a bot is buying it? I mean, it's a purchase for Amazon, Meta. It's revenue regardless. And then you look at their income statement and their financials and you see, no, wait a second, Amazon brought in $68 billion in revenue last year from advertising. And bots don't have eyeballs. And that is the fundamental issue. I will say the more I used Muse myself, I realized the other wrinkle in this. And that is you really see in this application a very consumer. friendly version of what all of us are using at work. It is like chatting with Messenger. In fact, there are times when Muse will just give you a thumbs up, much like a friend would who wants you to stop chatting at them. You know, like this is very much a consumer-friendly experience. And what does Amazon have that they're trying to turn into their own consumer-friendly AI chatbot? Alexa. Amazon's big initiative right now with Alexa is taking it from the speakers on your counter to the chatbot on your phone. This is Panos Panay, the former Microsoft executive. This is a big thing that he's doing. So I think there's all sorts of interesting battle lines here.
So Todd, aren't you a little nervous about running e-commerce purchases through Meta?
I am so much the wrong person to ask that. I was chatting with some of our guests before the show and they were talking about. Because you'll try anything. I am pretty much the ideal guinea pig for any kind of risky. I probably shouldn't say this on the podcast. I'm going to turn myself into it. What's your safe word?
Tell us your safe word.
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