Voice-activated virtual assistants for the home are all the rage these days. The credit lies largely with Amazon, which was the first big company to take the concept of talking to technology and squeeze it into a pretty little cylinder for your counter.

Amazon called its creation the Echo, and lots of folks have raved about how futuristically cool it is. I never got one, personally, as the Echo revolves around Amazon’s own ecosystem — and as someone who’s pretty thoroughly invested in the Google ecosystem at this point, its usefulness would be rather limited to me.

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