That's funny you say that because that's the same reason I almost went with the Wink2. My understanding is that it was a little more plug and play for the limited things it works with and that SmartThings is a "hackers paradise" as you put it.
Yeah that is my understanding too. If the Google Home would have launched with Wink support instead I would have gotten one. My enthusiasm for SmartThings is less tied to the platform (which is nice now that I have it) and more for the fact that they have deep Samsung pockets bankrolling them. I feel like Wink really could use an acquisition fairy godmother like that.
I'm still debating on switching from Echo to GH. The price of the Echo Dot is what got me in to that because I bought 3 for the price of GH. So far I've only opened one to play with and need to figure it out before the return policy ends. If I'm going to get into voice control then having several devices around the house to hear my commands would be nice.
Yeah I wish the Google Home had a Dot version, but this is early days and I expect that Google will eventually catch up to Amazon on that sort of thing. At least the full Google Home is cheaper than a full Echo, which makes it a little better. To me the platform you chose is a five year decision, not a 2017 decision, as the hardware in the devices shouldn't need upgrades like mobile phones do- the upgrades come all on the backend. Break the cost over five years and even a few Google Homes aren't that much per year/month. The SmartThings support is as good as I could expect, and once Android Assistant is on every phone it will be very easy to get away with having fewer Google Homes.
I don't regret waiting for the Google Home one bit. Partially because I already had an army of Chromecasts so that support out of the box was amazing, and partially because the experience so far has been top notch. I realized the other day that I really trust the Google Home to get things right the first time, because I now tell it to do things and then walk away before I know it understands me because unless I really stuttered when I said it the Google Home will understand it the first time.
Google is doing a good job getting its hooks into the bigger players (like Netflix and Hue) which I expect to continue in the future. In two years I see the Google Home being the iPhone of the category- limited support and ecosystem but amazing usability within that walled garden- while the Echo will turn out to be the Android platform of this product category- more flexible, more supported devices, but needs what are basically hacks to do a few important things that the Google Home can just do out of the box.