It's true. Google's Amazon Alexa-rivalling voice assistant has cropped up on the spec sheets of many products announced at CES this week, including Samsung TVs, JBL's Link Bar and the Klipsch Dolby Atmos soundbar.
While the platform will no doubt arrive on much more kit this year, we now know that will include some Sonos speakers. Today, Google announced that the Assistant is coming to the Sonos One wireless speaker and Sonos Beam soundbar, which launched with Amazon Alexa.
Interestingly, the company also said that 'earlier speaker models' will be updated to 'work' with the Assistant, so owners of, say, the Play:1, Play:5, Playbase or Playbar could be in luck. As they don't have microphones to pick up voice commands, though, you'll almost certainly need a microphone-toting middle-man device (such as a smartphone or Google Assistant smart speaker) to control it.
It didn't say when, but as Google's announcement focused on the brand's 2019 activity, we know it'll be sometime this year.
The Google Assistant update will allow owners of those select Sonos speakers who use Google's smart home ecosystem to play playlists, podcasts and radio stations hands-free just by using their voice.
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