Google Assistant automation routines have improved

Google Assistant went through a rocky period over the last year while Google was attempting a rather confusing re-organization of how their automation routines work. They managed to break most existing automation routines, and at times it seemed like nothing was working properly. This not only affected Sonos speakers supporting Google Assistant, but Sonos saw more impact than native Google speakers. I pretty much gave up on them and moved most of my automations to Alexa.

But Google finally seems to have gotten their act together, and automation routines are working again, including those which failed on Sonos previously. The earlier flaw that automation routines can’t speak any custom text on Sonos remains, but it’s worth trying Google automation routines again if it was the more recent failures that led to abandoning Google Assistant.