Laura Stevens

When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com Inc more than two decades ago, he sought to keep the online bookstore away from the government’s reach. He has said he looked into placing its headquarters on an Indian reservation as a tax-saving strategy. That was then. Today, Amazon, whose revenues in 2017 topped $177 billion, has become deeply entwined with the federal government. Bezos has built one of the largest lobbying operations in Washington, bigger than those of powerhouses such as Exxon Mobile and Walmart.

Amazon and Alphabet’s Google are considering a new use for their popular home speakers: becoming the home phone. Amazon’s Echo or the Google Home could be used to make or receive calls, apparently, a functionality that would give them further control over consumers’ digital lives at home. The tech giants could launch the feature in 2017, but the effort is hung up over concerns about privacy, telecom regulations and emergency services. And they are aware of the inherent awkwardness of having phone conversations on a speaker. One concern is potential consumer anxiety over speaking on a device that has the ability to record conversations, according to one of the people. People consider phone conversations to be the third most sensitive data category, after social security numbers and health conditions, according to a study by Pew Research Center.