Google Closer To An AR launch?
Since 2017, I’ve been tracking the development of Google’s projects around AR in the hope that the company would be back on track to launch its Google Glasses (which I found quite cool, even if launched with terrible timing).
The Google Glass, in 2014I believe Google is planning a massive launch for a potential AR device, as it acquired part of HTC’s extended reality (XR) business for $250 million.
For context, this follows Google’s 2017 purchase of HTC’s smartphone unit, where the company paid $1.1 billion to “acqui-hire” a significant portion of HTC’s engineering team, which would play a key role in building the successive iterations of the Pixel smartphones.
HTC will retain development rights in its XR division. The following deal aims to accelerate Android XR platform development.
The acquisition strengthens Google’s position in the competitive XR market, dominated by Apple and Meta, and it shows that a major move might be coming soon, potentially as an AR consumer device launch.
And if it’s unclear, Project Astra, on that device, will be the underlying AI assistant powering up future models of Google’s smart glasses.
In short, it all seems ready for a launch in 2025.
Project Astra has already given us a glimpse (from Google’s DeepMind offices in London’s Kings Cross) of what it can be!
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/nXVvvRhiGjI?start=1s&rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0Just recently, Google has undergone a massive re-org.
That makes it all ready for that sort of launch…
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