Google does not appear to be ready to give up on Google Glass any time soon, and has been reportedly working to revitalise the project. The group has apparently been renamed Project Aura, and engineers from Amazon’s Lab 126 have been brought on board to help out.
Google Glass has lost a large amount of excitement since the wearable was first announced in 2012. It has gone from innovative new technology to a privacy threat. Those who wear their Innovator editions of the Glass have been called “Glassholes” and are usually at the receiving end of verbal abuse.
Despite this, Google has been trying to find a niche for the embattled wearable. The company has been quietly distributing the device to manufacturing and healthcare companies to demonstrate its potential in the workplace. There has been little news about the reception of Glass among these companies, but work is the most likely place that this sort of wearable will see use.
The latest report from Wall Street Journal seems to indicate that Google is ready to begin another push for Glass, and it begins by renaming it to Project Aura. This has been followed by the hiring of many former Amazon employees, most of which had worked on the failed Amazon Firephone.
Interestingly, Google Glass will not be spun out into its own company under Alphabet. Instead, it will continue to be a part of Google. Alphabet has been incredibly coy about revealing how many companies will appear under the restructuring, and it is difficult so say what projects will end up at independent entities.
At the moment, it looks like Project Aura is gearing up to give Google Glass a new lease on life. Whether it will be successful in selling Google’s idea of an augmented reality future is doubtful. Although it might get somewhere if the company stops trying to sell the device to everyone and just focus on making it a workplace tool.
[Source: Wall Street Journal]
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