Before augmented reality is a thing, there is Google Glass: a hype experiment that ultimately fails on issues like privacy (looks like fools). At an I/O meeting yesterday with DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted that he made “mistakes” with Google Glass in multiple areas.
“I actually know nothing about consumer electronic supply chain chains and the difficulty of building it and building it at a reasonable price and managing all manufacturing and so on,” he said at the conference.
Brin said he is still a believer in the form, adding that Xreal’s latest device looks like “normal glasses” and has no “thing in front of it.” He noted that Google is not now acting alone as it used to be, but rather has “a great partner” in Samsung (Moohan Project Moohan headphones) and Xreal (Project Aura Glasses), part of the Android XR Extended Realten Reality program.
According to Bryn, when Google Glass appeared in 2013, there was also a “technical gap”. “Now, in the AI world, these glasses can help you without distracting you often, and this ability is much higher,” he said.
Google Glass is not a complete failure. It’s easy to forget that the product has been in enterprise equipment for many years since its debut and has been completely discontinued in 2023 alone. It also paves the way for future VR and AR wearables such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro. However, with this in mind, none of these projects set the world on fire.
