I think it's fair to say that we've seen some questionably useful Google Assistant integrations this CES, and will no doubt see a great many more in the near future. That's why it's a special occasion when a heavily-demanded, long-due integration is announced, as is the case with Google Assistant for the Sonos One and Sonos Beam.

Integration has been a long time coming - Sonos first announced that it was working on bring Google Assistant to its speakers in 2017. In November 2018, Sonos teased the CES announcement and asked users to sign up for a rigorous private beta, requesting that testers commit to 14 hours of listening per week, 10 voice commands a day, and survey responses within 72 hours. In that update, Sonos also stated that it would begin with only a few hundred homes of testers, subsequently expanding to a few thousand homes over the course of the coming months. The company ended by promising more would be revealed in early 2019.

That brings us back to the present day. Google revealed in a January 8 blog post that the first Sonos devices to the get the Assistant will be the 2017 One and 2018 Beam. The Mountain View tech giant also noted that earlier speaker models will be updated to work with the Assistant in the future, although it carefully avoided mentioning any rollout dates. Considering Sonos' description of its thorough testing, the launch may be a while yet, but it's good to see it on the horizon. When Android Police reached out to Sonos and Google for more detailed time estimates both told us there was nothing to share yet, though Sonos added that after CES it plans to scale its private beta program, which will provide it with the feedback and data it needs to set a date.

Source: Google