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Google will bring back useful Nest speaker function that Sonos took away
- Google has responded to the judge’s decision to overturn a ruling that favored home audio maker Sonos.
- Google claims that Sonos has been running a years-long, misleading campaign against features in Google Home devices and smart speakers.
- Google confirms it will bring back the ability to seamlessly group and integrate its smart speakers.
A California judge recently threw out a $32.5 million jury verdict that ruled in favor of Sonos in an intellectual property dispute with Google. Google has now responded to the overturned ruling and confirmed it will bring back a Nest smart speaker feature it was forced to remove.
In a blog post released today, Google says it was the victim of a “years-long, misleading campaign” led by Sonos against its Google Home and smart speaker features. The company then goes on to say:
The court stated that Sonos’ patents are both invalid — meaning they never should have been granted in the first place — and unenforceable, and affirmed that we developed the technology first and independently.
As Google continues to throw shade at Sonos, it takes a short break to mention that users will get back a feature Sonos forced it to remove. Users will “once again be able to seamlessly group and integrate Google smart speakers.”
Back in May, Google was found guilty of infringing on Sonos’s patents regarding multi-speaker functionality. This forced Google to dump features like multi-speaker groups, the ability to control the volume of a multi-speaker group, and the ability to use your phone’s volume rocker to control the volume of a speaker group.
The judge’s ruling now gives Google the freedom to bring back these features. This means you’ll be able to once again be able to group any combination of Google Nest or Home speakers for synchronous playback.