The aggressive price cuts in competition with Google also put it at the perfect price for "novelty electronic good that may or may not be useful"

(We bought one for a pretty tech savvy 89 year old who we thought might actually get practical benefits from IoT plugs as well as enjoy the novelty value of something that interacts vaguely like a human since he doesn't go out so much these days. But that's something of an edge case)

I bought three Google homes largely because of the price cuts, and after showing my mom over the holiday she decided to but one. She even commented on the novelty but had liked it so far

> But that's something of an edge case

The Baby Boomers are retiring in droves right now. It's becoming less and less so (in the USA).

I have retired baby boomers for parents. I can confirm that they are both somewhat tech savvy and enjoy the dot.

I think this is right. ~$30 for a nifty piece of technology makes a great no-brainer gift. It's in the ballpark price range of secret santas and gift exchanges.

Throw in that it was mentioned in all the black friday deal discussions and it was marketed to anyone visiting amazon.com for holiday shopping... well, they were going to push units regardless.

Easy to get in and already usefull.

My wife didn't like the idea of having a microphone in our rooms, now she asked me if i don't want to buy another one.

And yeah it is only used for timer, reminder, light on/off and music.

I love it too.

I didn't like the idea of my 4 year old having an easy way out of learning to read/write. I disable all voice recognition on our tablets/phones too. Next birthday it will be C64 time. :-)

(Edit P.S.) Don't get me started on Unix REPLs suitable for young kids. A simple for loop still reads best in BASIC.

Or Scratch.

My wife rolled her eyes when I told her I pre-ordered an Echo Dot.

When she actually saw it in action and found out I had only paid $50CAD for one, she told me to get another one.

I've only had Echo since Dec 5, but we're both becoming dependent on its convenience.

That sounds about right--plus the price point as others have mentioned; it's the price of a halfway decent sweater. It's the sort of thing that, for most people, will be appreciated if they don't have one and they can often use another if they do.