That's not to say that Alexa and others can't be useful, but just not to enough people that it justifies the R&D cost.
These are obviously what voice assistants should do, the research was just not there. Amazon was unwilling to invest in the long-term research to make that a reality, because of a myopic focus on easy-to-measure KPIs. After pouring billions of dollars into Alexa. A catastrophic management failure.
Edit: Oh, you wrote "verbal" that seems weird to me. Most people I know certainly don't want to talk to their devices.
If I'm alone I don't mind talking if it is faster, but there is no way I'm talking to AI in the office or on the train (yet...)
When is talking faster than text? I only ever use it when my hands are tied (usually for looking up how to do things while playing a video game).
People talk at about 120WPM - 160WPM naturally, few can type that fast which is why stenographers have a special keyboard and notation.
As such I can maintain about five minutes of slow pace before giving up and typing. I have to believe others have similar experiences. But perhaps I'm an outlier.
It would be one thing if they were just adding extra "smart home" features to connect new terminals. I can see benefit of some of the smart screen calendar and weather things. No, they seem dead set to completely kill what they had.