Amazon’s edge is its impressive head start. It first launched the Echo speaker back in November 2014 and made it officially available to all in the U.S. from 2015. By comparison, Google’s rival device, which makes use of the search company's own Assistant AI butler, only made it to market in late 2016. And so far it hasn’t been opened up for use by other companies. If Google does open the software up, though—like it did with its Android smartphone OS—it could give Alexa some stiff competition. As our own Tom Simonite has explained:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603317/alexa-may-have-won-ces-but-it-still-has-a-fight-ahead/