News hardware Now Google and Sonos hate each other
Before, they worked together and loved each other passionately. This is unfortunately ancient history and here we are talking about a new stage, again, in the fight between Google and Sonos.
A trial war for two years
There was a time when the two brands lived in peace and shared common interests. Google, the American giant with its powerful voice assistant, Google Assistant, and Sonos, a renowned brand in the sound industry. The two could only go together.
Since the advent of connected speakers, Sonos had to get on it and as a high-end brand, it has equipped itself with the best. A partnership with Google therefore began, and it was after a few years that the problems began.
While one might think that Google was stealing its knowledge so that Sonos could use it to create its connected assistant, it was the smaller of the two companies that complained first. This took place in early 2020 and according to Sonos, Google used their technology to improve their range of home speakers.
In 2021, Sonos wins the lawsuit and forces Google to change the way their speakers are made to prevent them from being banned from importing the affected products. For example, we can no longer modify the sound of several speakers at the same time because of this… In the meantime, the Californian firm had also filed a complaint for patent infringement.
Another new feud between Google and Sonos over the voice assistant
In May, we were already talking about the voice assistant project from Sonos, which launched its own version by abandoning Google Assistant. With Sonos Voice, the brand wanted to go further in what is possible to do with your voice, such as directly modifying the settings of the Sonos application or interacting with Apple Music.
Another important point for the brand is privacy. Whether it’s Google or Amazon, they are far from respectful of the latter and not everyone wants to risk having their personal conversations listened to and used for commercial purposes. Sonos Here plans to be completely anonymous.
It’s August 2022, and here’s Google launching a new lawsuit (again) against Sonos which this time would have infringed no less than seven patents belonging to them. According to Sonos, this would be a revenge strategy to scare them away. For their part, Google accuses the speaker manufacturer of carrying out a misinformation campaign and penalizing consumers with their different voice assistant.
In any case, a little competition for the voice assistants that we know too well like Alexa or Google Assistant could rather be beneficial for the user, especially if he intends to improve things.