Why Google Assistant is smarter than Alexa (for now)

“Alexa, how long will it take me to get to Chicago from here?”
This question is not profoundly complex. In many ways, it’s more like a search query, and it shouldn’t have anything to do with A.I. Yet there are several important data points involved, and the Alexa assistant that runs on my Amazon Echo speaker doesn’t know what to do. When I ask this question, the bot tells me to set up my traffic route for a daily commute.
Using the Google Assistant bot on the n