I Love You Sonos, But it’s Time to Make Up With Google (Premium)

We recently learned that Sonos is planning to dramatically expand its product offerings next year. But it's not enough: For Sonos to truly make sense in this heterogeneous world, it needs to make friends with its nemesis, Google. Otherwise, it could lose out to a growing field of competitors in the premium smart speaker market, many of which will offer the cross-platform integrations that Sonos currently does not.

This one is hard on me.

I am a long-time fan of Sonos and I have invested thousands of dollars in its incredible family of premium smart speakers. I defended the company during the faux outrage campaign that arose in the wake of its necessary decision to obsolete its older products, a problem that won't occur again with its newer, future-proof and more easily serviced devices. And I raged against Google for stealing its technology after pretending to offer Sonos a partnership so it could get a peek at its secret sauce.

The problem, of course, is that I use Google products and services too. And while I, like any thinking person, can see the obvious injustice in a Big Tech firm with infinite money unfairly and illegally chipping away at their much smaller and less powerful competitors---think Epic v. Apple, or Epic v. Google, for that matter---I also have more pragmatic day-to-day concerns. And part of the appeal of Sonos and other companies like it, including those in other markets, is that it's heterogeneous. That is, Sonos doesn't exist to serve only Apple customers, just as it doesn't exist to only serve Google customers. It not being tied to a particular ecosystem is one of the reasons I bet on Sonos.

But Sonos isn't truly heterogeneous. Yes, the platform supports over 50 streaming services, and the company even brags that it is "building bridges, expanding [its] platform, forging new partnerships, and pushing the limits of what's possible" on its "Our DNA" page. But that very page hints at the problem. Among the integrations listed there is Google Play Music, a service that hasn't existed for over three years.

Ah boy, do I miss Google Play Music. Created in the years before Google destroyed its relationship with Sonos by stealing its intellectual property, Play Music could, among other things, control Sonos speakers. And that's key because otherwise, you need to use the Sonos app. And the Sonos app is terrible. Especially if you want to not just play music but also manage music, a process that could be as simple as editing the playback order of songs in a playlist and as obvious as editing that playlist itself.

Today, several apps, including Spotify, can still control your Sonos speakers. And that's important for users of those apps: Not only do they get to use the app they know and like, but they can take advantage of the features it has, like playlist management, that the Sonos app does not. (To be clear, I am referring here to playlists that are native to the service. Sonos does have its own playlists too...