With open standards i have no problem integrating anything cross-brands. The only really hostile brands are preventing it to be honest(apple comes to the mind

With open standards i have no problem integrating anything cross-brands. The only really hostile brands are preventing it to be honest(apple comes to the mind and so does nintendo). Brand loyalty mattered in the past, where it was the only reliable way to judge new products in relation to each other. It only works to the merit of consumer if you were already subject to vendor lock in. There are plenty of alternate input modes that work like that too - back in the 90s i had lightswitch that could change intensity of the light dynamically - no need to even utter a word so even less risk of waking your wife up. you can add module to AC and control it via smartphone/webpage, without risk of voice recognition getting it wrong. you can get lights that automatically turn on to 10% brightness when someone walks etc. not to mention various privacy concerns for your guests - you did agree for amazon to collect the data, but did they agree too? Speakers sold is kinda a bad metric - active users/usage would be much more interesting - as i wonder how many of them ended up in attic, or thrown somewhere because they were useless.