Sonos Ties Prolonged Google Assistant Delay to Its 'Deep Integration From Scratch'
Sonos built its Google Assistant implementation as a “deep integration from scratch,” emailed a spokesperson Tuesday to our question on why it took a year and a half from announcement to deployment of the voice-control platform in the mic-equipped Sonos One speaker and Sonos Beam sound bar. Sonos announced availability of the Goggle Assistant software update Tuesday.
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Sonos has had integration with Amazon Alexa since October 2017 when it began shipping the Sonos One (see 1710040034). At the same time it announced the One with Alexa support, Sonos said it was working on Google Assistant integration, which would be available the following year in a software update. Google and Sonos “essentially had to build a new platform" that incorporates ‘works with’ and ‘built-in,’ he said, referencing the Alexa and Google Assistant certification programs, and “seamlessly integrate it with the Sonos platform -- both products and partners.”
Maintaining “continuity of control in the customer experience took time to get right,” the spokesperson said, referencing the need to blend “full ecosystems” covering Sonos, Google, other streaming services and control partners. Customers need to be able to play a song from Apple Music using AirPlay 2, add a song from Spotify in the Sonos App and then ask Google Assistant what’s playing, he said: “That was the biggest challenge vs. making a clone of a Google Home or Echo device.”
The Sonos website advertised availability of Google Assistant on the One and Beam Tuesday, but the support page showed support only for Alexa under the voice control section. As a user of both platforms, we asked Sonos if we could use both on our One and Beam. “You’ll select one assistant for each speaker, but you can easily change to the other in the settings menu,” the spokesperson said. We were instructed to go to Settings and to select Voice Services to set up a different assistant on a speaker: “Most of your personal settings will remain,” he said. As of Tuesday afternoon, our Sonos speakers had not yet received the update so we couldn’t change the assistant.
Though each Sonos speaker needs to be dedicated to a voice assistant, they can both live in the same household, said the spokesperson. “If your house is grouped, you can ask the Google Assistant to play a song while upstairs, then the person who is downstairs can ask Alexa what’s playing,” he said, giving one example. One supported Sonos voice-enabled device allows users to request music or content to be played on other non-voice-supported Sonos speakers in the system, the company said.
Sonos customers will be able to “request and control with voice” their experiences with Spotify, YouTube Music, Google Play Music, Pandora, Tidal, TuneIn, iHeartRadio and Deezer, Sonos said. With all streaming services available on Sonos, they will be able to issue voice commands to go to the next song, change volume and pause -- “to start,” it said.
Beam sound bar users will be able to use Assistant to turn on a TV connected via HDMI Audio Return Channel with Consumer Electronics Control, Sonos said. They can also switch from TV to music and adjust the volume by voice. For more advanced features -- requesting specific TV shows or movies from streaming services -- they need to add Google’s Chromecast Ultra ($69 at the Google Store) streaming device, Sonos said, which would leave Amazon Fire TV users out of the advanced voice capabilities.