Now goes the other way for me. It's like a little puppy that has read my entire internet history. Now when I do anything google's got 3 redundant reminders that are always a few minutes late. From most recent flight:

- Hey you've got a flight (2 days before)

- Hey you've got a flight (11 hours before)

- Hey you've got a flight (4 hours before, eg 3am, thanks)

- Hey your flight is now leaving 3 minutes later (1 hour before flight)

- Hey your flight has changed gates (initial gate assignment, already at gate)

- Hey your flight has changed gates (actual gate assignment, already at gate)

- Hey your flight is now boarding (on board door closed already)

- Hey your flight leaves in 15 minutes (20 minutes after flight was in air)

oh and:

- Hey amazon shipped you a package (package has arrived and amazon told me about it within 10 minutes)

- Hey that baseball game you wanted to watch later, here's the score!

- Hey you once looked at a SF Giants article... Here's their score and when they play now and for EVER

- Hey

- Hey

- Hey

So, here's the thing that I like about it... if google now had an API then you could build an app that talked to google now for you. I like the idea that I can host my own echo endpoints at echo.ranman.org and then have my own server make calls out to other stuff.

I don't really use anything amazonian besides a kindle and the echo (although I do really like the fire TV stuff).

I use a ton of other apps/stuff -- and many of those have APIs. If I could call out to those APIs with my voice and then get stuff back it would enable a lot of convenience and intelligence that's hard to do on just a phone (or if more apps supported making API calls via siri, google now, cortana, etc.)

I'm really excited to see what people build with the SDKs and I hope it takes off.

I have access to the SDK but I haven't built anything with it, and I remember having an NDA. So I don't know how much I can say about it's functionality.

I'm excited about it, but it's more cautious optimism because it's kind of limited, but I don't remember if it's too limited to have the kind of stuff another commenter pointed out like "When does McDonald's close?"

And Google Now does have an API.. they're just super protective of it right now. It will definitely be more interesting once it starts to open up ;)

Just curious how early did you sign up for the SDK and how long was it between your request and when you were given access? I requested access probably a month ago and haven't heard anything since.

I signed up fairly early and I got a request in a few weeks.

Thanks. It seems like they have either slowed down sending out SDK invites or the number of developers requesting has increased. I'm probably not the only one who waited to signup for the SDK until I had received my Echo.

> I'm just imagining what a device like the Echo would be if backed by Google Now. It would be ten times more powerful, easily.

Maybe, but competition is good. Google isn't the only company capable of R&D, and if Amazon turns this into something amazing then you can bet that Google will work to make their stuff even better. This is a Good Thing for all of us, and as an Apple user I hope it inspires them to get into the game.

It is a bit limited if you compare it directly to something like Google Now (or OK Google?). But I think once more developers get involved we'll see some cool things. For instance, a frequently mentioned feature is "What time does McDonalds close?" which Echo currently can't answer. But perhaps pretty soon we'll have a Yelp app which can do that.

I like that Echo NEVER ever talks without being talked to. I don't know how you could integrate Google Now without it being pretty annoying.

Not talking about the Google Now notifications. Meant "OK Google"