Alexa runs on top of Amazon Echo, which runs on top of Amazon FireOS, which runs on top of Android, which runs on top of Linux, which runs directly on the hardw

Alexa runs on top of Amazon Echo, which runs on top of Amazon FireOS, which runs on top of Android, which runs on top of Linux, which runs directly on the hardware. Linux itself is a rewrite of Unix, which is a very pared-down variant of MULTICS, a system developed in the 1960s. Something which doesn't run directly on the hardware, but instead communicates with it through several layers of intervening software, isn't an operating system by any stretch of the imagination, however impressive it might otherwise be. I'm disappointed that large high-tech companies such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook don't develop their own operating systems from scratch like Microsoft did, but instead just take advantage of the hard (but not particularly innovative) work put in by Linus Torvalds and other open source developers. Building something better, using lessons learned in the intervening decades, should be well within their grasp.