Google Loses Sonos Patent Case, Will ‘Downgrade’ Its Speakers

Most speakers are “dumb” in the sense that without an audio source, like when connected to a PC or TV, they don’t really do anything. However, Sonos changed that narrative with its connected speakers which could stream music from various streaming services without requiring users to connect it to their computer or phone.

This feature has since been adopted by various other companies in their own smart speakers, such as Google. Unfortunately for Google, it seems that they have recently lost a patent case against Sonos and as a result, instead of opting to pay Sonos for a license to use their patents, the company has decided to give its speakers a “downgrade”.

In a post on Google’s Nest Community blog, the company notes the changes that they’ll be making to its speakers moving forwards. For the most part, thankfully it appears that the changes don’t seem to be particularly major. It seems to mostly affect users who use speaker groups.

For example, one of the changes is how users adjust volume, where users will now need to adjust each speaker individually even if they’re grouped. This might be the biggest change, but then again, like we said it only affects users who might own multiple smart speakers at home and have grouped them together. If you don’t, then most of these changes probably won’t affect you.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Audio, Gadgets
Tags: Connected Objects, Google, IoT (Internet of Things), Legal, Patent, Social Hit, sonos, Speakers