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I think much of their attention is on the integration with Amazon's Echo system, for now, and I'd guess/hope that shortly thereafter, similar integration with Google and Apple. If you spend any time reading these boards, there are about a thousand "this should be simple, why haven't they done it yet" comments like this. Somewhere in Sonos, there's a Product Manager for their engineers, who maintains a backlog of ideas, and figures out what can get worked on and what priority each item has. And probably has to run it through Marketing, to evaluate how much of a "this will bring in new people" the plan is versus the "this will please people who have already spent money, but won't spend much more because they've already got the system" which many of us are.
The simple fact that there are hundreds of comments requesting this should put this at the front of their product managers backlog. No excuse to not put a small dev/design duo on this. Alexa integration can be done in parallel. Its a small lift that has obvious business value. What else does it take??? I'd pay extra at this point. It's ridiculous.
Honestly, as someone who is involved with software development on several levels, I'm amused by your "no excuse" comment. I've done, and continue to do, my fair share of backlog massaging. There are always things that are near and dear to my heart that don't make the current sprint. I constantly have to remind myself that my priorities are not necessarily the priorities of the company. Someone has determined that so far, it hasn't risen to the "we can spare resources to implement this" stage. Who knows, maybe they're working on it now.
As someone who works as a product designer on a software development team, we salivate over user feedback like this. And if a major product lift could happen through a measly chrome extension, it'd be a quick win for my team. We have a parking lot of backlog items we revisit and prioritize every sprint planing session. It has nothing to do with what's near and dear to your heart, it has nothing to do with what you as a product manager wants at all, its about the user needs and what will drive the product forward through an incremental innovation track. This isn't about "your priorities" - it's about listening to your users and gauging what will drive the product. Other than the recent 8.0 Alexa integration, what else have they released in terms of software? Looking at the release cycle notes and I'm not seeing much.
I just wish there was an official way to control Sonos from a browser, very frustrating to have a house full of computers that can't control our Sonos except by opening a VNC window onto a Windows box running the Sonos controller.
I and several members of the family have Sonos and would find very useful having a connection between my Macs browers and the Sonos, specially as we are all travelers and using VPN + browser = can watch UK TV worldwide with the sound thus coming from the Sonos for better quality than the laptop.
This request pre-dates the Amazon Alexa or Google assistants. If you do a search, you'll see it goes back to 2013. So it's not that they are focused on their assistants and don't have time for the Chrome extension. Plus, a while ago, there was an unofficial Chrome extension that I was using. But once the developer was either forced to remove it from the Chrome webstore, or he was no longer able to maintain it due to versioning differences with the actual SONOS network, it eventually disappeared, and I can't find it any longer :(
Even Amazon Alexa offers a way to play devices from your computer, even Chrome devices (https://alexa.amazon.com). So the competition has already been there and done that. And SONOS pre-dates any of their systems, and actually bent over for them to incorporate their technology in their device. So they are definitely slipping.
I'm not going to go ad hominem on the prioritization process.
However, I'd find it deeply useful with nine zones and a couple chromebit's in my house. However, if there's a strategic rationale for why they'll never consider adding a chrome extension, I'd love to know what it is. If it's just higher priority stuff that will generate revenue, I get it. I just want to know if it's coming, or why we can't have a 3rd party one?