I disagree. It's not about collecting information - at least, not directly. Assistants don't seem to be designed to gather neither any substantial amounts of in

I disagree. It's not about collecting information - at least, not directly. Assistants don't seem to be designed to gather neither any substantial amounts of information, nor any unique information. Due to their limited communication capabilities they're extremely poor at collecting meaningful data - there's simply no point in talking to them as their utility fails with anything but the simplest and most direct commands. There's not much data in "turn kitchen lights on", "set alarm at 10am", "play $album by $artist", "remind me to buy milk" and "convert 4.7 miles to kilometers" - at best, this exposes a few minor behavioral patterns that can be trivially determined even without a dedicated device to talk to. And, hopefully, outright spying wasn't one of the design goals, even though they can be of dual use. Google, Apple and Amazon may be cooperative but they aren't NSA, after all. My opinion, it's about use of particular services. Alexa will push you towards Amazon purchases, use of Amazon Music, etc. Similarly, Homepod requires investment into Apple ecosystem. And Google Assistant will push towards all things Google. In my opinion, voice assistants were made to be helpful within their particular ecosystems and thus add more ties to their vendors' services. (And, sure, those services collect data.)