Amazon Echo can now track your Amazon packages

Amazon continues to upgrade its sleeper-hit Echo speaker with new features. This week's batch included an interesting, if obvious addition: You can now ask Alexa (the Echo's voice-activated assistant) to track your Amazon shipments.

As Amazon explains in this week's email to Echo owners:

Alexa, where's my stuff?

Expecting a package from Amazon? No need to grab your phone or computer--Alexa can tell you when your next package will arrive. Alexa will also tell you when the order was placed and add a link to more details in your Alexa App. Just ask: "Alexa, where's my stuff?"

In a brief test, despite no recent Amazon orders, Alexa relayed when my next shipment — a monthly subscribe and save collection — was expected to arrive in early June.

Echo launched as a quirky internet-connected speaker, and is a useful audio entertainment device. But its most interesting features go far beyond, including the ability to hail an Uber and control smart-home appliances.

And, of course, because it's Amazon, its utility as a shopping device is increasing.

The "end goal — it may take a long time — is to get to the point where you can order anything on Amazon," Amazon’s devices head David Limp told Recode earlier this year.

And note the subtlety: You're not asking Alexa to specifically "track my Amazon order." Why would you ever shop elsewhere? Though it's also possible other retailers could add similar capabilities — "Alexa, where's my Walmart order?" — if they wanted.