What made Alexa miserable to me was the Amazon ecosystem. It is just way too limited to be more useful than a timer, news broadcast and perhaps home automation

What made Alexa miserable to me was the Amazon ecosystem. It is just way too limited to be more useful than a timer, news broadcast and perhaps home automation assistant. In that respect, a better voice interface wouldn´t help. In comparison Google and Apple are competitive in so much more (in particular calendaring, contacts, music/videos). I think Amazon missed the boat in not coming with an open standard and get cosier with independant makers like Sonos or Ikea etc. Basically they could have pulled an android for the voice assistant ecosystem, but preferred to try to build another walled garden.