The Mountain View company would not like to compete with the Apple brand, which very recently unveiled its very impressive Apple Vision Pro. At least not on the hardware side.
Google has been experimenting with augmented reality for a few years now. If the announcement of Google Glass marked the beginning of the 2010s, it was as much for the vision of the future that it offered as for the interstellar flop that followed. However, the American giant has never really given up, until today.
A business out of breath?
In 2022, the press revealed that Google was working on an augmented reality glasses project, the “Project Iris”. This revelation was hardly a surprise, since in 2020 the company had acquired North, a Canadian company which was already marketing its own augmented reality glasses at the time. This acquisition gave rise to a first concrete result during Google I/O 2022, with the brief presentation of connected glasses capable of translating the words of a foreign language interlocutor live.
However, in 2023, these projects face a very different economic and social climate. While layoffs and reshuffles within the Alphabet group led the giant to gradually cancel many projects, the chaotic development on the side of Iris did not help the teams working on it.
Especially since Google’s efforts in augmented reality and virtual reality ended up being divided between different divisions of the company after the departure of Clay Bavor, in charge of the subject. Unsurprisingly, Google has therefore decided to abandon its ambitions to market augmented reality glasses, according to Business Insider.
An Android for augmented reality
However, the efforts of the American giant in this area have not been completely interrupted. Indeed, if there is one thing that Google knows how to do very well, it is operating systems. By seeking to reproduce an approach similar to that of Android, ” Google is focused on creating software platforms for augmented reality that the company hopes to license to other headset makers “, revealed Business Insider.
For now, Samsung would be the first customer. Announced at the last Google I/O, the partnership between the two giants should lead to hypothetical “Galaxy Glasses”. Helmet or virtual reality glasses, the project would be “ a direct response to fears over Apple’s work “, always according to the American media.
We can therefore expect that the Apple Vision Pro will be seriously challenged by the major teams in the years to come. However, Apple has a good head start, and it will certainly be that way for some time to come.
Source : 9to5Google
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