Some 'earlier' Sonos speakers will work with Google Assistant this year

Sonos has been talking about its plans to bring Google Assistant support to its speakers for a long time now. Unfortunately, we don't have much of an update on exactly when that'll happen, but Google did have a little new info for us on what speakers will be supported. As we already know, the Sonos One and Sonos Beam (both of have mics that work with Amazon's Alexa) will be able to use the Google Assistant at some point in 2019 -- but some unspecified "earlier" speakers will also receive Google Assistant upgrades too.

Since no other Sonos speakers were designed with voice commands in mind, the speakers themselves won't technically work as Google Assistant devices. But it sounds like you'll be able to talk to the Assistant on your phone or a separate device like a Google Home Mini and start playback that way. That's essentially how Alexa works with older Sonos speakers, so it would make sense to see the same thing happen with the Google Assistant. It also remains to be seen if Sonos speakers will be able to be grouped with other Assistant-capable speakers like Google's own Home Max, but we have our fingers crossed

We're still anxiously awaiting more from Sonos about how this will all shake out, but the company has remained tight-lipped about the Google Assistant aside from confirming last fall that the feature wouldn't arrive in 2018 as promised. Here's hoping that beta test has started, though.