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Sonos: Working with big tech sucks

theverge.com

1–10 of 37 posts

Re: Sonos: Working with big tech sucks

#2
Not totally unrelated, but Sonos recently bought snips.ai, a startup working on assistant with a focus on privacy and local voice recognition (and they also use some Rust). The move is likely motivated by Sonos not wanting to rely on Google/Amazon

Re: Sonos: Working with big tech sucks

#3
So what, nobody at tech wants to be responsible for a Docker strategy decision.

The article still has no answer on why it is so difficult to actually get a Sonos to play nice with the two interfaces supplied by Amazon and Google. These are becoming industry standard functioning interfaces i.e. APIs that every consumer can hookup with IFTTT.

Re: Sonos: Working with big tech sucks

#6
post #3

So what, nobody at tech wants to be responsible for a Docker strategy decision. The article still has no answer on why it is so difficult to actually get a Sonos to play nice with the two interfaces supplied by Amazon and Google. These are becoming industry standard functioning interfaces i.e. APIs that every consumer can hookup with IFTTT.

I really wish people (you) would read.

> The other thing that rings true in the NYT story is the detail that Google told Sonos it would pull Google Assistant support if Sonos enabled simultaneous wake words. That’s the feature which lets speakers listen for both “Alexa” and “Okay Google” at the same time. Google really comes off looking like a bully.

Re: Sonos: Working with big tech sucks

#7
post #4

What's with the random apostrophe in the title?

The title of the html page has a couple extra words. Maybe Verge tried to change the title to remove `Google lawsuit` and forgot the apostrophe.

>Sonos’ Google lawsuit says what every smaller tech company was thinking: working with big tech sucks - The Verge

Re: Sonos: Working with big tech sucks

#8

> including synchronizing audio across groups of speakers, adjusting the group volume, and setting up devices on a local wireless network. I'm sorry but patents like this shouldn't really be enforceable, its completely anti-competitive.

Why? The patent would be for specific implementations to achieve these features. They aren't trivial.

Re: Sonos: Working with big tech sucks

#10

> including synchronizing audio across groups of speakers, adjusting the group volume, and setting up devices on a local wireless network. I'm sorry but patents like this shouldn't really be enforceable, its completely anti-competitive.

I guess we'll have to reserve judgment until we see Sonos' complaint, but if the main thrust of it is that Google, Apple, and Amazon should not be able to make internet connected speakers because Sonos got there first, then I'm not a buyer. Sonos speakers are extremely pricey for what they are. A world in which they are the only option is a worse one than one in which there is competition, even if that means Sonos shareholders make less money. (FWIW, the request for an injunction on Google selling its own speakers suggests to me that this is the main argument, so I'm already biased against Sonos' position.)

Of course, I am not a fan of Google or anyone attempting to force some kind of exclusivity arrangement. That doesn't seem like something that benefits the end-user. We'll have to see whether that is a correct representation of the conversations that they were having.

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