[jmuguy]

I agree, I own two of them. I use them to play music from Spotify and set timers (which is actually very helpful, and makes me realize how lazy I am).

However, I get an email once a week from Amazon with "whats new" on Alexa. Its always a few useless things like holiday trivia and then some garbage you can order from Amazon. It was a ground breaking device, but its clearly meant to just be another gateway to Amazon's weird, limited ecosystem.