It's not perfect, but it is linked now with Spotify, ESPN and other publishers, Google Calendar...

More importantly, they have done a good job (leagues better than the competing voice services) of opening their service to developers thru Alexa Skills, which has enabled hundreds of added features including things like ordering an Uber.

I just wish the Skills weren't behind that unnatural syntax.

E.g. Alexa, Ask recipes how do I make an omelet? instead of: Alexa, how do I make an omelet?

I imagine it's to prevent conflicts but I'd like the option to put some services in the default namespace as it were.

I use my Echo exclusively with non-Amazon services: Google Calendar, Spotify, Philips Hue.

So the product is quite open. That being said, the third-party experience could be smoother - it is a minor pain to have to specify "with Spotify" every time I want the Echo to play music.

Overall I'm happy with my purchase, though.

I'd be happy for more full-service ecosystems to choose from. The more that users get fragmented between these ecosystems, the more each ecosystem is incentivized to open up.

I like Echo because (after setup) I don't have to use my phone with it. And at this point, there's little reason not to be in Prime. $99/year is pretty affordable for most of America.

There is an open API, so this situation will improve over time.

Alexa and AWS Lambda are two of the things I'm most interested in these days (disparate, I know) but they're also things without open source equivalent. I'd love to see that change.

Check this out: http://jasperproject.github.io/

There is an api where you can build your own integrations (skills).

Yep. I'm already invested in Apple products, for better or worse. If Apple comes out with something like this for Siri I'll snatch it up. I actually kind of resent the fact that my shopping experience with Amazon has gotten worse in the past couple years while they push their original series, streaming services, and devices (many of which suck).

If it was working with Google Music, I would have bought it in a heartbeat.