If you wanted to know the phone number, location, or operating hours of a business, a quick search on Google will immediately yield results on the front page. However if you’d like to learn those details without having to reach for your phone, not to worry because it seems that Amazon’s Alexa will now be capable of that.
In a report from Bloomberg, it seems that Amazon has recently updated Alexa where it will now be capable of telling users the operational hours of a business, phone number, and also its address. This is thanks to a new partnership that Amazon has struck up with Yext, who coincidentally enough is the same company that provides business data to Google, Apple, and Facebook.
Given that Yext also manages about 30 million facts about 1.2 million businesses, users will also be able to ask Alexa for information on businesses besides its opening hours, location, or phone number. For example users will be able to request for nutritional information on a McDonald’s Big Mac, and so on.
There is without doubt that this new feature will help Amazon better compete against Google, who for the past decade or so has been more or less the default platform when it comes to searching for such information.