Google Assistant Support

I’m not surprised as never expected before the summer

I was told by the salesmen at the store that google assistant was going to come by february..

How can you tell when a salesman is lying?






His lips are moving. :8

I'm always telling my 6-year-old daughter (and her friends!) to have a little patience. Sonos Google integration will come because Sonos knows that Google, like Amazon, both have too large a market share to be ignored. It's a very 1st world problem where we seemingly have to decide on a technology ecosystem to side with, made especially difficult for us when each by-design have distinct advantages. Do I go with Amazon for their purchase-power and sweet sweet Prime perks or hang with Google for their smarter AI integration and over-all hugeness. The fact is choosing either of these two modern-day Goliaths to anchor your subscriptions to is much of a much and does not preclude using the free aspects of the other. More to the point, in a year or threes (maybe fives) time, we'll all be buying significantly cheaper and smarter and more integrated tech from the local superstore. So my lovelies, don't stress it, Goolge will come to Sonos eventually and life will go on, at least until a little David company throws their new ground-breaking tech stone into the mix.

yeah, but I don't think any manufacturer will add new features to an old hardware. Do you think Sonos will add new feature like google assistant to hardware released about 1-2 years ago? I am losing hope especially on the support for GA on the Sonos one.It has been almost 6 months since the release and no signs of any GA support so far.


Why wouldn't they be able to release it on older hardware? They added Alexa support to 13 year old hardware. The fact is, most Voice Assistant processing is done in the Cloud. Alexa hears a command, and sends it to the Amazon Cloud. The Cloud processes the command, and it routes it to the Sonos Cloud. The Sonos Cloud then interprets the command and sends it to the Sonos device(s). Since the commands from the Sonos Cloud to the Sonos devices are Voice Assistant agnostic (and basically no different than the commands from an app controller), there is absolutely no reason why Google Assistant cannot do the very same thing, with no more overhead on the Sonos devices than there is today.

Basically, the Sonos devices don't really care where the commands are coming from; app, cloud, Alexa, Google Assistant, PC, home automation system, etc. The commands are the basically same from all of them, and require nothing more than what the devices have on them today, even the ones manufactured back in 2005.

yeah, but I don't think any manufacturer will add new features to an old hardware.


You can't be serious with this statement. Firmware updates with new features is very common these days. Pretty much anything that's connect to the internet, and even many things that aren't, will get regular firmware updates. Often, these are minor features and mostly bug fixes, but bigger features are more common on higher end products like phones and wireless speakers.

What if the GA enabled software image does not fit on the EMMC or the CPU or RAM is not sufficient to process google assistant as efficiently as the alexa. Anyway no reason to sigh....I guess we will know the truth this year :-)

Yeah for one reason the software may not fit on the old hardware. It is not about the commands being processed locally or in the cloud. The second reason is probably they will have version two of the product that the manufacturer would like to promote instead of version one of the hardware.



Sigh.

Uhhh, read my post again. The required software is already there!!! And yes, it is very much about the commands being processed locally or in the cloud. If they were being processed locally, you would need to fit all the Alexa and Google Assistant logic on the device. But since they are processed in the Cloud, the only thing you need on the device is the ability to process generic commands coming from an app, a PC, a home automation device, or a voice assistant in the cloud, and as I said, that capability is already on the device!!!

As to the last part, if Sonos had only wanted to promote new devices instead of old, why would they release Alexa for the ZP100 and ZP80 from way back in 2005? Tell me what is different about Google that requires new software only on new devices, instead of working with 13 year old hardware like Alexa does? Otherwise, you are creating a problem out of nothing.

It's possible, probable even, then there will need to be a firmware update to sonos devices when GA is implemented. However, it highly unlikely that firmware is going to be significantly different in size/scope to the firmware update for Alexa. Sonos One may be an exception since it will need to handle taking voice commands as well. However, Sonos has promised that it will work with GA, and not building in enough horsepower to handle it would be a tremendous failure. Not to mention, as jgatie pointed out, this is primarily a cloud update.

Hey, Awesome flow chart. This makes is clear now. I was under the impression that Sonos would have two different images to support both variants. Didn't think both AMZN and GOOGL would be keen on a co-existing environment.

But that's for the Sonos One only right? I could be misremembering, but the setup for Alexa integration had no configuration on the Sonos side, it was only on the Alexa side. I would guess that Google will work the same. So if you're not using a Sonos One where you would need to tell it where to send voice commands, nothing is needed.

As an aside, assuming this is correct, a Sonos system should be able to work with Alexa and Google at the same time. it may even been that the Sonos One works with Alexa and Google at the same time, and will rely on the wake word to know where to send the voice commands.

There is a configuration on the Sonos One, where you have to select the Voice Assistant in the Sonos app under the Settings. Also, I thought the Sonos app launched the Alexa app (or was it vice versa?) to link the two, even for non-Ones, in order to register accounts, etc.? Anywho, that is only on the app, not the firmware. But a release is a release, right? 😉

Hey, Awesome flow chart. This makes is clear now. I was under the impression that Sonos would have two different images to support both variants. Didn't think both AMZN and GOOGL would be keen on a co-existing environment.


I imagine Sonos insisted upon it. They are the ones footing the bill for the Sonos cloud to translate other commands into generics. Sonos has always taken care to remain agnostic when it comes to partnering up; even if it takes more work in the beginning, it pays off in the long run. Otherwise, they would have just done a "Alexa, tell Sonos to . . . " skill and been done with it.

I think I've seen indicated somewhere that a number of features, like selecting Sonos speakers as default playback targets, will be rolled out eventually. I also expect that in time, at least the voice enabled speakers will be integrated into the Home ecosystem like the Google Home speakers themselves, i.e. that they will see the addition of more controls in the Google Home app.

Voice match is something that I would like to see implemented very much. Surely, Sonos must understand that not all of their customers' households consist of only one person?

I have a Sonos One that I rarely use. I would definitely use it more if it had Google Assistant. I would move the Google Home to another room and use the Sonos One exclusively in the kitchen/dining area.

How long could it possibly take to add Google Assistant support?

If there were something I could do to make it happen then I would be willing. The Sonos One seems like a good speaker, but I currently don't use it.