Sonos, Squeezed by the Tech Giants, Sues Google

Not to mention their acquisition of possibly the only mature local-network voice assistant (Snips) followed by immediately removing the local-only option.

Sonos speakers for a home theatre and multi-room sound system, still shits all over Google and Amazon. By Far.

So in my opinion, Google may be able to do better but they haven't

Agree in principal but I fear it is too little too late at this point; Sonos has been leaning hard into thier "IP Portfolio" for a while now. To me their core technology was basically to patenting clock sync over wifi for the purpose of playing audio. Anyone developing a similar product who might even consider that Sonos holds a patent should have a trivial time of producing a non-infringing implementation. Nevertheless Sonos have somehow been able to win some cases against some decent enough names like Denon, and now it looks like they are going for real meat. I suspect Google to steamroll them in the courts, but it may be lengthy and expensive to undo some of the legal precedent they have established. Or Google could have signed a bad contract with them in the past, which could further empower Sonos (bad for everyone.)

Despite its proprietary nature, when Sonos first came out I heavily recommended it to many people because it solved a lot of problems and "just worked" at a price point that was high but fair, especially given the apparent quality and polish of the product. When it became apparent they were instead committed to bleeding their own customers dry I completely gave up on them. Was there ever any discussion on HN about how Sonos encourages their customers to brick their current players when upgrading by offering deep discounts? This practice is despicable.

I hate to say it but now I have come to judge people who buy Sonos negatively as I feel they are uninformed consumers contributing to a malicious company. This is a pretty dangerous place to be for a company reliant on their brand and reputation.

They are attempting to set precedence with Google before going after Amazon and others. Going against them all at once would likely bankrupt them.