I think one reason some may protest is these just aren't hacker-friendly to most IMO. They're consumption devices, and aren't tweakable enough, a la:

- Homebrew

- Custom firmware

- API's / SDK's

- Custom services / frameworks to orchestrate in-out-around vendors ecosystem (IFTTT?)

Not really enough to get at the gears of it. Is Alexa, by itself, the kind of ecosystem a startups would want to devote to? I imagine to make a really good Alexa product, it tends to be very specialized, and it's risky to be stuck with just one market.

Not to say Amazon's future isn't looking prosperous, but they control the APIs, the commission/royalty fees, etc. Whose to say 10 years from now, they wake up and say, you know, Alexa isn't financially viable anymore, your hardware has no site to connect to, and Alexa just shows the red loop/line of doom?

[1] https://developer.amazon.com/docs/alexa-voice-service/api-ov... I guess there's this.