It seems like services have gotten worse once they learned people don't want to use it to buy products.

I've seen a lot of reports that services have gotten worse and most blame this to Amazon cutting staff but I have to wonder, why would this make it worse? Wouldn't it just stay at the same level it was?

It kind of makes sense, especially with the huge push for security and that Amazon would lose huge brownie points if they ever got caught listening or selling voice data.

Which leads me to wonder, how is Amazon making money from Alexa & if they're not, what incentive do they have to keep it going?

They can't just turn services off as that would piss off a lot of people all at once. They probably can't start charging a fee for Alexa now either.

What's the best solution? Cut costs to control bleeding (maybe intentionally make services worse) until enough users abandon ship that you can pull the plug, maybe find a buyer that's not a direct competitor or in a few years move it to a paid service and restore functionality to the pre-shitification phase but tout it as improved.