I find it hilarious that people think something like Alexa / Google Home is anything but a gimmicky ad, let alone the future of computing. Like other ad support

I find it hilarious that people think something like Alexa / Google Home is anything but a gimmicky ad, let alone the future of computing. Like other ad supported content--Gmail for example--it has some useful features. Also like other ad supported mechanisms of the past, it's a huge invasion of a user's privacy for little gain. When this thing is actually "smart" (whatever that means) enough to do something useful without phoning back to Amazon and when that thing isn't just buying useless shit from Amazon, let's revisit. Until then, let's remember that this is just another medium for advertising. Nothing more. Nothing less. Google does, however, specialize and excel at one thing: advertising. I wouldn't count them out just yet.