Too few people recognize how many valuable skills a job like this can teach you, and it feels like too few people I meet professionally have these entry level jobs anymore. I always feel like the interns or new hires that I see that have never had a hard, exhausting non-office environment job are just missing a pretty fundamental experience. Whether it's fast food, waiting tables, washing dishes or other manual labor, it can be formative and instill a great work ethic.
I think what makes it better is that it's completely hands free and accessible to everyone in the vicinity.
I already have a smart phone with Google Now, and I have a Sonos, but I'd still consider getting this to solve this common use case in our household:
Every morning my wife or daughter asks what the weather is going to be like. My wife could ask Siri, but she doesn't always have her iPhone at hand. I always have my phone, so I ask Google Now. I think it would be fun to have an Echo in the kitchen so my wife or daughter could just ask and get an answer. And it goes way beyond that. My daughter loves taking my phone and asking Google Now silly questions. It is high entertainment for her. Echo would be a device that she could interact with without having to co-opt my (or my wife's) phone.
This is a killer feature for parents. It's why I bought my daughter a Kindle tablet instead of an iPad. Having the same sort of controls available for the TV is why I'll buy this and ditch my Google TV (which, actually, I really like).
I'm hoping that controls will span both devices, so settings that are made on the tablet will also take effect on the TV.
I find the arguments for Hygiene Theory being the cause of the increase in autoimmune diseases and allergies much more credible, and it seems to have more science behind it.
There was a good discussion of "An Epidemic of Absence", a recent book on the topic, on EconTalk this week. The basic premise is that these disorders may be caused by a lack of microbes and parasites in the modern Western world. The lack of those microbes and parasites causes our immune systems to be overly aggressive towards harmless outside substances (peanut allergies, celiac disease) or mistakenly aggressive towards our own bodies (Crohn's disease, type I diabetes, etc.)
Sounds very plausible to me, but it lacks a villain, which I think makes it an unsatisfactory explanation for some.
[1] https://www.americanpublicmedia.org/