Cannot group Sonos system with Google Home devices

So I just bought a One for the living room with probably the overall goal of completing a 5.1 setup.

In terms of Google products, I have a regular Hub in my bedroom and a Home Mini in the kitchen, with a Shield TV and come Christmas Day, a Chromecast Ultra in the living room.

So not as entwined within the Google ecosystem as many here.

I guess my point and what I’m thinking for me is that should I just stop my Google purchases from this point onwards and merely buy the Sonos stuff to get the whole house audio set up?

I recently purchased a Sonos playbar, sub and two surrounds only to find that they cannot seamlessly integrate with my google home devices.  I really do like the Sonos speakers, but the failed google integration is a real deal breaker so I’ll be returning the Sonos setup sometime this week if I can’t find a work around.

I saw one person mentioned using a chromecast to the aux in of a sonos speaker as a potential work around.  Can anyone confirm if this works and the level of integration that can be achieved, such as does this allow me to group the Sonos speakers in one room with google home speakers in another room to play music in both rooms concurrently?

Unfortunately, buying only Sonos is not a realistic option for me because I don’t want to spend $500 bucks a pop for speakers in every room of the house, but would like to have a nice quality sound system in the tv/entertainment room that can integrate with the more affordable, but lesser quality speakers in the rest of the house.  True Google integration is obviously not a priority for Sonos if they won’t even venture to release an official statement on whether or not support for this functionality is planned or in the works.  I’m a very disappointed new customer and will likely not be buying Sonos again due to their false advertising on the level of Google integration (or lack thereof in this case).

Bambooya, I can confirm that any speaker you can fit a chromecast to will have 100% integration with Google speakers and can be grouped. This means through the Home app, not the Sonos app. Unfortunately you can't integrate Sonos One this way as they don't have AUX inputs.

Beati3, Thanks for confirming!  It sounds like using chromecast audio is a viable work around in my case or for anyone with a Sonos device in the room with a aux input.  It’s too bad I just discovered that Google discontinued chromecast audio so there’s no guaranteed method for integrating going forward.  Due to this I’m still planning to return the Sonos and stick to Google for now.

Sadly, it looks like the Google Assistant integration in Sonos is pretty weak.   Hard to say who’s to blame, Google or Sonos.   No matter, you can’t group Sonos speaker in a Google Home Group, and, you can’t even shuffle a Spotify playlist with the Sonos Google Assistant.   And, no ETA for fixing.   The Sonos speakers sound nice, but if I can’t use the Google Assistant to control, I’ll return and replace with speakers that have better GA control.  

I too was disappointed about lack of grouped speakers integration with GA. However, I was not particularly surprised. Sonos’ business model is similar to Apple’s. They want you to buy into an ecosystem, not just a single product. The Sonos One is the gateway drug, the good value for money speaker to tempt you in, with the hope you’ll add one to each room, then a pricey sound bar to your TV, followed by more Ones to add as surround speakers. 

If they provide full (speaker groups) integration with Google Assistant, we can all then choose to buy a Google Home Max instead, or a Google Nest Mini for the rooms where the extra volume isn’t required. I’m not sure this is what Sonos want. 

I hope I’m wrong.

I was looking into buying a Sonos 5.1 system and integrate it with my smarthome and google with the intent of adding the speakers into my various groups. Seeming this cannot be done, I won’t be buying. Glad I found this tread. Made an account just to post this and follow it in case down the road it does become possible.

Well I think this may explain a lot of the seemingly-inexplicable missing features within the GA-Sonos ‘integration’. As I suspected it’s nothing to do with any technical limitations.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/8/21056198/sonos-google-statement-lawsuit-ces-reaction-big-tech

I don’t think the recent news really changes much of what I said above.  Although Google may have used some of Sonos tech to do their multiroom audio, they are still not the exact same protocols.  I don’t think the lawsuit is really going to change much as far as this goes.

As far as other missing features, it’s hard to say whether Google didn’t want to give those features, Sonos didn’t want to implement and maintain them, or the Sonos hardware just couldn’t do the required processing.

I am immensely disappointed in the lack of ability to group my Sonos One with my google home speakers.  This is unacceptable and makes my Sonos essentially useless in parties.  I’d rather pick 5 decent speakers over 1 sorta good overpriced one.