It's not really common here and I actually don't know a single person who uses Siri etc. actively. I'm sure it got some attention after it was introduced, but o

It's not really common here and I actually don't know a single person who uses Siri etc. actively. I'm sure it got some attention after it was introduced, but only for the novelty of it. However, I recently bought a German Amazon Dot device and I think I'll keep it. Right now, it's main job is to play music but I also use it for setting timers and to tell me the current time and weather. I've never used other "voice-based assistants" before but I can see the benefits that come with a dedicated device like the Amazon Echo. It's really comfortable if you can control things with your voice, you don't have to get to your PC or smartphone first. I'll probably integrate it with my home automation system to control lighting, and maybe add a media center like Plex/XMBC, too. Edit: The only thing that bothers me is that the German voice is not as fine-tuned as the English one, and as of now there are not many skills available (built-in as well as third party), so I switched it to English. But guess what - you can't use the English skills unless you port your German Amazon account to amazon.com... the Echo is essentially handled like a kindle device on the server side, which means you'll lose all your eBooks and music if you switch...