I think people sometimes get confused by how Google Home links in to other devices. It typically doesn't require "skills" to be added, just add in the device within the Google Home app on the phone, and the control is there. Plus, you can easily use IFTTT to add in lots of other things, like triggering multiple actions from a single phrase. If you have, say, smart locks on your doors, smart lights in all the rooms, and a smart thermostat, you can use IFTTT very easily to create sequence so that when you say "Hey Google, I'm going up to bed", it locks the doors, turns off the lights in the living room, turn on the bedroom lights, and lowers the thermostat to your preferred night time setting.
Whilst Google Home might not be able to launch Amazon Prime video, I've used it to watch & control Netflix on my TVs easily enough, with the addition of a Chromecast. Just saying "Hey Google, play Daredevil on the Living Room TV" makes the TV turn on, the Surround sound system automatically turns on when it sees the TV is on, and the Chromecast starts playing the next unwatched episode of Daredevil (or picks up where I left off if I was part way through watching it). This without *any* need to set up controls, etc.
It's also very handy if I want to add something to my grocery order with Tesco, as they've released an IFTTT that links to my Tesco account. So, wherever I am in the house if I realise I need to add something to my order, I just say "Hey google, add ******** to my basket" and it will add it to the latest order. The system's even smart enough to pick my usual, say, brand of toothpaste if I say toothpaste, or that I usually buy chicken breasts with skin-on, rather than skinless, and picks those, etc.
In my and my family's eco system, Apple are losing ground in pretty much every area. Two years ago, I had 2 iMacs & a MacBook Pro, my Brother-in-law had an iMac & a Macbook, my niece was fully Mac, and my B-in-L's partner & her son were Mac owners too. Phone wise, they all had iPhones, but I was the outlier with a Google Nexus 5 (it fitted into my use-case a lot better than an iPhone, and I liked being able to make it work the way I wanted to work, rather than adapting my expectations to the way Apple decided things *should* work). Last year, he got an Echo as a present for Christmas, & I let them play with my Pixel. Since then, in the last 12 months, I've switched one of the iMacs so that it boots Windows 10. I plan on my next machine on being a Windows 10 one. I've now got all my iTunes library on a Drobo 5N2 & find myself using Plex for streaming direct to my TV, instead of using iTunes & my Apple TV. I also have all my music on Google Play Music & stream from there instead of from iTunes. They've all switched to Pixels (luckily we all have different cases so it was easy to work out which was which on the coffee table at Christmas!), and they are all considering moving to Windows 10 machines when they next upgrade.
I have a Google Home in the living room, & minis on the stairs, bedroom, & kitchen, with Hue lights in the living room, stairs & bedrooms. I have a Chromecast ultra on the main TV, a Chromecast on the bedroom TV, Chromecast Audios hooked to the main surround system downstairs, and a pair of old powered PC gaming speakers upstairs. The total spend on Google Homes/Casts etc without any discounts is £430. For that I have full smart control in four rooms, with very good audio in the two most important rooms and reasonable audio on the stairs & in the kitchen. I also have full streaming control on the two TVs, including in 4K HDR on the living room TV, all for what will most likely be less than £100 more than the cost of a *single* smart speaker from Apple. That's why at the moment, Amazon & Google are *way* in front of Apple in this space. Their product ranges allow people to dip a toe in the Smart Home waters at a reasonable price, and add in functionality easily at very little cost. They have options suitable for all different sorts of setups. Do you really need a £349 smart speaker in the kitchen when what you're going to be using it for is setting timers, playing background music while you cook, etc?
I've seen the usual suspects here saying "I'm going out to buy 10 Homepods as soon as they're on sale!" Fine. waste your money if you like (although I still suspect there's some of those accounts are actually satires on the typical Apple fanatic!). The rest of us will gladly save money, & install systems that allow us more choice in functionality, streaming music services, control in how *we* want to do things instead of being told "you have to do it the way that Jonny Ive has decided is the best way".
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