Google had all of the pieces before Alexa even existed. The Google Assistant was basically a bunch of existing Search tech duct taped together at the start. So

Google had all of the pieces before Alexa even existed. The Google Assistant was basically a bunch of existing Search tech duct taped together at the start. Some of this investment is negated by the amazing progress in neural nets since Google was founded, and diffusion of Search knowledge, but not all of it.