With the holidays coming up, smart speakers are likely at the top of the wishlists for the technically inclined. These days, smart speakers are a central component of the smart home. But before choosing a smart speaker, you have to decide on a smart-home platform, with the top three being Amazon Alexa, Apple Home/Siri, or Google Home/Assistant.
I don't have any home automation and not at all interested. We briefly owned an Amazon Echo but never really used it and to be honest was more trouble than it was worth. Tried setting it up to "automate" turning on the TV, setting the soundbar, the satellite received etc but it only ever seemed to work 50% of the time. Apart from that the occasional beep used to annoy us and we didn't like the "always listening" so we turned it off and shoved it on eBay. We have a Sonos speaker with built in Alexa but that's permanently turned off as well.
I guess Amazon, Google, Apple are likely to be more long lived than some startups that entered the game as those that fold render devices useless because without internet and their servers they don't work (guess not ALL devices are like this.) Environmentally, I don't like them either - how many servers are needed to turn on a light bulb:
I expect this is fairly typical and this supports (one would hope) thousands of bulbs. Of course each of these functions will have one or more servers running to support them hopefully only spun up when actually needed for resilience/performance etc). Whatever, what a waste just because someone wants to turn a light on from their phone!! God said "Let there be light"; Light said "Downloading firmware update, please wait".
I don't know if "prefer" is the correct word. 
What I have are two Echo Shows and a Dot. The one in the living room and the one in the basement pretty much control lights or outlets controlling lights. The one in the kitchen is used to entertain the grandkids and answer SIMPLE questions (like how many tablespoons in a 1/4 cup). I gave up on Siri and only use Google Home to control the Nest thermostat.
None of them are smart. I truly believe that they are getting dumber as time goes on.
