I love our Echo. It's in the kitchen. We use it for shopping lists, timers, reminders, weather forecasts, translating measurements, and answering questions. We use it as a Bluetooth speaker from our phones, and listen to music on it from Spotify. I get news updates from NPR and Marketplace.

My wife got one for our bedroom, and my daughter got one for her apartment.

It's a fantastic device, given how little we paid for it, how much we use it, and how it doesn't cost us anything beyond our Prime and Spotify memberships.

Also? It's also a terrible business. I'm not surprised that Amazon has been losing billions on it, and is trying to figure out how to make it profitable.