Sonos won the court – now Google has to fix it

Sonos won the court – now Google has to fix it

It loses the ability to control the volume on multiple devices.

Loudspeaker manufacturer Sonos and tech giant Google aren’t known to be pearly friends – especially after the latter came out on the scene with their smart speakers. So for a few years now, these two have sued each other, and the latest point in that fight has gone to Sonos, writes for the New York Times.

Google’s problems lie in the use of five technologies that Sonos is said to have patented, at least most of which are speaker network management. A recent ruling in US law now prohibits the company from importing products that use these technologies. Yes, Google admittedly is also American, but the products are like carpentry all together in China, and therefore must be imported.

This primarily means a problem for Google Home speakers, Pixel mobile phones and Chromecast streaming media.

At the same time, the court ruled that the import ban won’t even take effect in 60 days, meaning Google now has two months to pay what Sonos asks for — instead, it has come up with workarounds that don’t interfere with the Sonos toe patent.

But Google doesn’t seem ready to get around this problem. In fact, they have You have already been notified of some job changes to their speakers. According to the company, it’s primarily about changing the setup procedure and how speaker groups work.

What end customers will notice first of all is that in the future you have to change the volume of each speaker individually rather than all together as a group.

This, and possibly other changes that users won’t even notice, will enable Google to sneak around import bans.

If you think these changes will make Google speakers less easy to use — especially if you have several of them set up in a group — you’re probably right.