[oakashes]

I don't think it's true that the Echo was only a novelty, it was and still is an extremely effective way to do a couple of tasks that people find very useful - mainly playing music of course. The hardware and processing required to recognize its wake word very reliably and arbitrary voice commands somewhat reliably in an open space was an incredible leap forward for consumer products at the time. But it has managed to add essentially zero value to the initial offering in the decade since then.

[ghaff]

YMMV of course. I maybe use it to play music in my bedroom a couple times a month. Usually I play it from either my Apple TV or my computer.

It's useful for a few other things. A weather forecast if I haven't gotten out of bed yet, setting an alarm, turning my bedroom lights on. The occasional quantity conversion in the kitchen.

But all those add up to something closer to "novelty" than whatever investment Amazon put into the technology.