https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/28/16378096/amazon-echo-alexa-google-home-competition >Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung are all chasing voice-based artificial intelligence with smart digital assistants that you talk to. It’s a future we’ve been promised for years: a computer you can talk to at home, and now the competition to make it a reality is really heating up. While Alexa, Cortana, Bixby, Google Assistant, and Siri all offer unique advantages for their associated platforms, they all need to keep learning to improve. That learning is powered by more users, more cameras and microphones, and by these digital assistants being in more places by being on every device you own. Amazon proved this week that it’s way ahead of Google in the race to be the computer for your home. >Amazon invited the world’s media to its headquarters in Seattle this week, and kept its event secret until just hours before the company unloaded five new hardware products. There’s the smaller $99 Echo, the larger Echo Plus with smart hub, and an Echo Spot alarm clock for your bedside table. Amazon even launched a $70 Fire TV with 4K and HDR support, and some cute Echo Buttons to play trivia games on an Echo. It was a lot of hardware, and a lot of surprise.