[HN Gopher] Google is building a new augmented reality device an...
___________________________________________________________________
Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating
system
Author : rbanffy
Score : 127 points
Date : 2021-12-15 14:23 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| lgleason wrote:
| Google was an investor in Magic Heap(Leap). One of the early
| developers for Google was an angel investor in it and those
| connections lead to the Google investment, among others. Magic
| Leap just has a down round where they raised 500 million at a 2
| billion valuation, roughly the same valuation they had when they
| raised ~500 million a few years ago. So they are also competing
| with themselves on a project that has mostly generated losses.
| (edited for clarity)
| laserlight wrote:
| Take it slow Google. You'll have to redo it anyways once Apple
| announces theirs.
| dekervin wrote:
| This is so mean ! Yet it's probably the game plan, to be in the
| best position to adapt to whatever Apple we'll do.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Just look at the first Android concepts.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| But it's Google, so the program will be canceled after a
| disappointing beta.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And appropriating a bunch of search terms.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Reserve a plot in their graveyard.
| dqpb wrote:
| I have Google announcement fatigue. It's just so pointless to get
| excited about anything they say they're working on. I wonder how
| employees feel after spending years working on a new product only
| to see it tossed aside and forgotten. Years of their life wasted,
| discarded like they never mattered in the first place. It makes
| me shudder to imagine that as a possible trajectory my life could
| have taken. I mourn for any of the multiverse versions of me that
| lived that experience.
| jsnell wrote:
| There has been no announcement. This is Ars reporting on a blog
| post on somebody reporting on a job posting.
| ryatkins wrote:
| December 2023 - Google has canceled augmented reality device and
| operating system.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| No thank you! They already harvest enough personal data and I'm
| not giving them direct access to my eyeballs.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| It seems that Google Glass was not ready for prime time when it
| launched. Now, as in the next couple of years, seems to be the
| inflection point for the whole ecosystem. Apple is also
| supposedly preparing for a launch of their glasses.
|
| I see tremendous use cases for these glasses in all sorts of
| workplaces from surgery, dermatology, hair stylists, factory
| assembly, horticulturists to potentially nefarious uses cases
| like the police and military.
|
| Welcome to the brave new meta world.
| Grakel wrote:
| Yep, and Google will fail to foresee practical needs and cancel
| the project in less than five years.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It'll stop investing on it the very moment they cease to
| perceive it as an existential threat. That's more or less
| what Google does.
| dingosity wrote:
| You mean the brave new meta walled garden?
| moksly wrote:
| Those glasses have been used in elderly care here in Denmark
| for quite a while. Nurses who treat wounds use a set of glasses
| to document the process so they don't have to switch in and out
| of gloves a million times.
|
| I wouldn't too much about the big American advertisement
| companies getting a lead on it, considering how little they are
| trusted outside the US in anything related to enterprise.
|
| Those glasses I mentioned are actually Google glass if I recall
| correctly, but with some completely different software because
| naturally you can't use Google software to document patient
| data in the EU.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > I wouldn't too much about the big American advertisement
| companies getting a lead on it, considering how little they
| are trusted outside the US
|
| Given how much Apple is leaning on healthcare, they might
| actually be able to break into this market if they ever
| release their own glasses.
| moksly wrote:
| Are they breaking into healthcare in Europe?
| dmitriid wrote:
| I don't know how spread it is, but it has some presence
| in the UK it seems
| mysterydip wrote:
| It seems glasses like these will be inevitable at some point,
| whether from Google or someone else.
|
| How will we have any privacy at all in a future where anyone
| could be recording you and uploding that data to some cloud? All
| it takes is one person with them at a party, or restaurant, or
| busy city street.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I'm hoping that Apple releases theirs using LIDAR instead, and
| that sets the tone for the rest of industry.
| ryandrake wrote:
| That ship has sailed a long time ago. There is a good chance
| that everything you do outside of your home is being recorded
| by someone or something and stored somewhere. Including your
| neighbors' Ring cameras, traffic cameras, shop cameras, and
| workplace surveillance. The only saving grace so far is that
| it's not getting automatically uploaded to YouTube yet, but
| _somebody_ has access to it.
| willob33 wrote:
| Yeah let me know when the designer drugs that build the cognitive
| awareness of AR, without all the dumb gadgets, are available.
|
| I'm sure we could simulate experience through detailed
| hallucinations, methods that leave behind the neural structures,
| reinforcing belief through social story telling. That's how
| religion worked.
|
| Everyone is obsessed with making experience happen through
| technology as if it's more real to our memory down the road, when
| it never happened for anyone who wasn't there.
| 3maj wrote:
| We're going to get to a point where instead of advertisers paying
| per click they'll pay per look since the glasses will be able to
| track eyeballs. Hell, there might be a premium that pays "x" per
| every millisecond spent looking at the ad.
| jarpschop wrote:
| That doesn't sound dystopian at all. Got to love capitalism!
| postsantum wrote:
| This, but unironically. Under alternative systems you aren't
| going to choose what to look at
| nynx wrote:
| Could you expand on this? There are many economic/political
| systems in which people have more freedom than in
| capitalism.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Incredible claims require incredible proof.
|
| In this case, I'd probably settle for even a single real-
| world example.
|
| You can't use hypothetical systems here because the
| implied power structures created will be utilized by
| actual humans.
| rbanffy wrote:
| That's all subjective. What is freedom to you? Which one
| is freer: choosing and working to buy a house or having
| the absolute certainty you'll always have a house? Which
| one is more liberating? If you had that certainty, would
| you abandon your current job and write poetry?
| typon wrote:
| No need to expand on religious beliefs. All it takes is
| faith.
| jeabays wrote:
| Yes, it's so important for me to choose between 16
| different brands of the same thing, all owned by two
| massive monopoly megacorporations. Get bent.
| gjvc wrote:
| Washing powder is the canonical example of this.
| harpersealtako wrote:
| If an overabundance of detergent brands are the
| "canonical example" of the future-present dystopia, I
| think we're gonna be fine.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Click farms are going to be soooo creepy. Bunch of disembodied
| heads on a shelf with the eyes flicking back and forth
| skohan wrote:
| So it seems like the tech giants may be in a race towards
| creating the "metaverse", or "metaverses". As a kid this would
| have been an incredibly exciting idea, but instead this kind of
| news creates a weird feeling in the bottom of my stomach. That's
| mostly for two reasons:
|
| 1. It seems like efforts so far towards creating the metaverse
| are heavily focused on reproducing the inequalities and status
| heirarchies we have in this reality. What's the point of escaping
| into a virtual world if it's just another place to get on a
| status treadmill?
|
| 2. Is there any chance that this is going to be an open,
| standards-based system like the current internet? It seems like
| this will almost certainly be a walled garden, or a set of walled
| gardens tightly controlled by a few powerful corporations. Will
| the open web be "legacy" which is gradually fazed out?
|
| Even Niel Stephenson's metaverse in Snow Crash was not this
| dystopian.
| lukebuehler wrote:
| It's not gonna be like we image it now: virtual places where
| people gather. It's going to be the twitter feed equivalent of
| an online world: tailored to you and your preferences to
| maximize engagement.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| It definitely won't be like Second Life, even though that is
| exactly what it should be (for better or worse).
| rbanffy wrote:
| With the sky filled with ads.
| feraligators wrote:
| Next stop for Fuschia?
| thebeardisred wrote:
| Surprised to see this is the only comment (yet) mentioning
| Fuschia.
|
| While I'm not hopeful for it being a community OS, I'm
| nonetheless interested in seeing the direction it moves in
| putting pressure on libre operating systems.
| MichaelRazum wrote:
| Isn't it all similar to Microsoft's efforts in mobile devices? I
| mean gates tried really hard to create a windows on a mobile
| device. Nokia and co tried by the way as well. Then came apple
| from nowhere with the first iphone.
|
| I bet something like this happens again, so I don't think it will
| be facebook, google, or apple. Ok maybe apple. But I would rather
| bet a good working device will come unexpected and will make a
| huge impact - like the iphone did.
| [deleted]
| mwattsun wrote:
| People laughed when Steve Balmer went on stage and started
| dancing around like a crazy man singing "Developers, developers,
| developers!" but that's what Microsoft gets right and Google gets
| wrong. As a developer, I have no confidence that Google will
| stick with anything. With Microsoft, I can still create a Windows
| Forms program. Heck, I could write a DOS program and it will
| still work in Windows 11. I'm currently learning Microsoft's
| Blazor because I have no confidence that Google will keeping
| putting resources into Flutter and Dart (once their internal
| needs are met, they tend to stop is how I perceive it.)
| echelon wrote:
| Microsoft bought Github and improved it. In addition to Visual
| Studio and C#, Microsoft developed VSCode and TypeScript.
| Microsoft pours a lot of love into Azure, WSL, and PowerShell.
| We know where they're going with things.
|
| Google considers us a stretch goal and will deprioritize and
| defund if developer revenue metrics aren't reached. Google
| developed Go (mixed feelings) and Dart (meh). GCP was once
| considered expendable. At the heart of it, they're still an ads
| company.
|
| Microsoft gets it. Google doesn't.
| DantesKite wrote:
| I find Google is really good at taking projects that work and
| building the infrastructure around it to keep it working.
|
| They suck at innovation though.
| cardosof wrote:
| I'll believe it when I see it - they may shut it down at any time
| to funnel more investments into tracking, ads, lobbying and PR.
| kgwxd wrote:
| r/nottheonion
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Again?
| n8cpdx wrote:
| Similar to other commenters, I came here in anger. Google has
| fucked it's users, it's developers, and the broader ecosystem
| with its handling of AR. Google's engineers should be
| embarrassed, and the executive teams who suddenly are pretending
| to 'get it' should be embarrassed.
|
| ARKit (iOS) works. It works well. They've built the groundwork by
| pushing out LiDAR. They've continued to advance the SDK. Key
| capabilities, like map-based geolocation are SDK-level features,
| rather than being reserved as Google Maps exclusives. They've
| made sure their phones and tablets have high quality cameras,
| compasses, and GNSS receivers, so the experience works better.
| They've made sure their devices have the horsepower to run AR
| experiences at 60fps, even with overhead from recording and
| streaming and multitasking. Edit: how did I forget about spatial
| audio? Spatial audio is a key capability of the iOS ecosystem
| (AirPods) that Google probably doesn't have the imagination or
| coordination to execute on.
|
| Google. Google has:
|
| - made a list of the devices supporting ARCore, because they
| can't manage their device ecosystem
|
| - kills key APIs and SDKs (SceneForm) after heavily promoting
| them. Doesn't update its doc and deprecates API with not guidance
| on replacements. "Just copy and paste hundreds of lines of OpenGL
| code from the samples" they say. ffs
|
| - they still continue to push out devices that can't keep up. Is
| it Qualcomm'a fault? Maybe. Somehow Apple doesn't have that
| problem. Mysterious. Maybe a large near-monopolist like Google
| could get their shit together and use their market dominance for
| good. But no, Android users get shitty overheating phones that
| can barely run AR at 30fps, if the apps run at all because all
| the underlying tech is no longer maintained.
|
| - they keep key innovations to themselves. They beat Apple to AR
| navigation, but fuck developers who want that.
|
| Oh, and btw, for people who want to do cross-platform work,
| Google massively fucking up AR has held everyone back. iOS is
| ready for top-notch AR years ago, but it's a tough pill for
| people to swallow when you have to drop support for all android.
| Google is holding the industry back.
|
| I hope Google gets fucked as bad as they've been fucking their
| users and developer partners.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > They've built the groundwork by pushing out LiDAR.
|
| I'm convinced the LiDAR on phones is apple's big beta test of
| lidar on AR Glasses - to potentially avoid adding a camera and
| the related controversy associated with it.
| pjmlp wrote:
| > "Just copy and paste hundreds of lines of OpenGL code from
| the samples" they say. ffs
|
| For example, the Metal frameworks versus copying Vulkan samples
| from a random Google GitHub repo.
|
| The last migration guide from Renderscript into Vulkan compute
| is a sour joke.
| candyman wrote:
| Google doesn't really build things or have product management.
| They need to acquire. So I expect them to do that if/when things
| get serious and they realize how far behind they are. There will
| probably be money to be made if we can identify the best fit
| names for them.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| what could go wrong if we don't have the framework to test and
| verify these algorithms behind.
|
| If google detects you are looking at men it may bias its
| algorithms without even having the control on it so you get a lot
| of gay content.
| whoisjuan wrote:
| Google had the head start here with Glass, and then in classic
| Google fashion they let it die.
|
| I'm always baffled how bad is Google at playing long term games.
| Their biggest mistake with Glass was trying to productize it too
| fast and stopping when they saw it didn't have good consumer fit.
|
| They could have instead go more incremental by releasing
| developer hardware and learning from that. They could have kept
| that program small and nimble, but instead they pivoted into some
| bizarre enterprise program that has always gave me the impression
| of a "save face" move. Weird company.
| duderific wrote:
| As long as Ads keeps bringing in billions, there is little
| incentive to think long term.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Android Things was a great example how bad they are.
|
| 1 - Remove Java layer from AOSP
|
| 2 - Add C++ frameworks as replacement
|
| 3 - Call it Brillo and show it at Linux Plummers
|
| 4 - Bring Android layer back with restrictions, call it Android
| Things
|
| 5 - Add back the capability to write drivers with NDK (lost in
| Brillo - Things transition).
|
| 6 - Let it stagnate for around one year
|
| 7 - Kill the project.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| People start with the assumption that Google folks are very
| wise. Why? This assumption just makes it more difficult to
| explain their bad decisions.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'd say they are all very smart. Wisdom is orthogonal to
| that.
| fossuser wrote:
| Even Google Wave could be another example of this.
|
| They killed it almost instantly? This was before Slack,
| discord, etc.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| An invite only collaboration tool? How could it have failed!
| nomel wrote:
| It couldn't even scale up to 200 messages, because it was all
| so incredibly unoptimized. It's like one guy worked on it,
| then it was immediately abandoned.
| c0balt wrote:
| Someone at Google couldn't count that low. /s
| funshed wrote:
| Will that be Google's 68th Operating System or 69th I forget how
| many they are up to now. /s
| xt00 wrote:
| God.. why another OS.. jeez... it feels like even google isn't
| immune to chesterton's fence..
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| I sure hope they create a new programming language for it too!
| whymauri wrote:
| Well, _someone_ has to get promoted!
| adjkant wrote:
| > But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have
| destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0234215/characters/nm0048127
| mandeepj wrote:
| > Google's 68th Operating System or 69th
|
| Maybe those are iterations for them
| lgleason wrote:
| As an Android developer and early Glass explorer it pains me to
| say that I agree with a lot of the comments here.
|
| I was having a conversation with someone connected to the upper
| execs there one time who explained this to me. They said that
| Google could generate the same amount of profit with a small
| fraction of the staff it currently has. The thing is though, the
| stock price would not be nearly as high and they have to keep the
| buzz going, by pushing out a lot of bets to pump up the stock.
| All that they need is enough perception of innovation to make
| wall street happy. So that is what they have done, and as a bonus
| a large part of salaries are paid with stock which allows them to
| keep the ponzi (my term not, theirs) scheme going.
|
| Up until a few years ago most developers loved Google, but they
| have systematically done a lot of things to piss off a large
| number of them and you don't see nearly as much Google love these
| days. The big question is will that negative sentiment eventually
| affect the stock price? I know that I would personally like to
| see more competition in the search space (which is their bread
| and butter) and have less Google lobbyists in Washington DC.
| Also, great companies eventually do falter. The question is, will
| Google's fall be as fast as it's rise? Time will tell.
| azeirah wrote:
| I think we're getting closer to a time where smaller players
| can start competing in the search engine space.
|
| Recently here on HN someone launched a search editor for small,
| niche, seo-free, old, content/text-heavy websites. It's useful
| because it serves a specific purpose, and can give you very
| different but useful results due to how it presents its
| results.
|
| Storage is getting cheap, scaling is a solved-ish problem, ML
| and AI make simple to empjoy intelligent search easier than
| ever.
|
| Of course, the solution is not to come up with a slightly
| tweaked google clone (like bing, duckduckgo, ...) but something
| that's more in the realm of reimagining what search means and
| does. I don't think it's wise to fight Google at its own game.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| I think this is the one you're talking about?
| https://search.marginalia.nu/
| azeirah wrote:
| Yep, marginalia for sure! It's great. I will bookmark it
| this time :x
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| They could call it StARdia!
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Good joke but perhaps offloading some of the video to the
| network could be a good move
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Google - churn and obsolescence as a service.
| gardaani wrote:
| It seems that Google is hiring engineers so that they will be
| ready when Apple launches the AR/VR device.
|
| Within one year after the Apple launch, Google has copied and
| launched their own version. It won't run as smoothly, but it's
| cheaper. So, anyone who can't afford to buy the Apple product
| will buy the Google product.
|
| And this is how the duopoly will live forever..
| rirze wrote:
| free market system at its best...
| dougmwne wrote:
| Overly optimistic. Google can't even copy successful products
| anymore. See smartwatches.
| Clampower wrote:
| Or Pixel phones. It's ridiculous that they still can't
| distribute them globally. I live in the Netherlands and can't
| purchase one anywhere without crossing the border. And if it
| breaks (which pixels often do) no warranty support.
|
| How can this be company like Google ?
| zmmmmm wrote:
| > We're still likely a decade or more away from mass consumer
| adoption of AR devices
|
| Both Ars and Google seem a little behind the eight ball here (or
| a lot?). Do they realise that there are completely functional AR
| apps today on the Meta Quest store? Real apps where you can
| interact with virtual 3d objects in your own living room. I set
| up my own dojo with japanese decorations on all my office walls
| so that when I'm fighting my virtual opponent it has the right
| vibe. This is real, on a device in the low hundreds of dollars
| and owned already by millions.
|
| I really think the media bought it's own hype 5 years ago when it
| went in hard on the "VR is dead" meme. All the while Facebook was
| changing the fundamentals of the game with a low cost portable
| device that all the enthusiasts snobbishly dismissed but regular
| consumers love.
| mbf wrote:
| No it isn't. Google is playing. Just like Microsoft in the early
| 2000's with prototypes that others look at, copy, and release.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| stARdia
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Can they fix Android first? Since years I don't have LTE internet
| when Android connected to a Wifi but I haven't signed in.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Are you kidding? How is that going to get me a promotion to L7?
| jlarocco wrote:
| Augmented reality from an advertiser? No thanks. Sounds like
| something straight out of a dystpoian sci-fi story.
| standardUser wrote:
| As Fry once said, "Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and
| movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and
| T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams.
| No, sir-ee!"
| lancesells wrote:
| I totally agree but VR from an advertiser that's about as moral
| as a cigarette company seems to be doing ok and a market
| leader.
| valine wrote:
| Facebook didn't make oculus, they bought it. So far their
| main contributions have been to require a Facebook account,
| and halt development on the next generation flagship PC
| headset in favor of budget android based VR.
|
| IMO racing to the bottom on price when the products still
| have FOV issues and low frame rates is a huge misstep. It
| doesn't matter how compelling Facebook's metaverse platform
| is if the hardware sucks.
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| Quest hardware doesn't suck though. The future of VR/AR is
| absolutely wireless and absolutely NOT PC based. PC VR is a
| niche market and always will be. I have a Rift and rarely
| use because who wants to be tied to a wired device that you
| can't see? Facebook has made a ton of mistakes and I'm
| really not fan but working on the Quest that was not one of
| them.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > in favor of budget android based VR.
|
| But it can still work with a host PC and it has a higher
| res screen so whats wrong with it?
| MikusR wrote:
| Go and Quest the standalone headsets that don't require a
| PC were developed after getting bought by Facebook. Quest 2
| is 120hz screen same as Index. And due to slightly smaller
| FOV a higher resolution than Index.
| dwallin wrote:
| Creating a minimum viable product at a lower price point
| was the the whole magic behind the first Oculus. There had
| been better quality virtual reality headsets before that,
| but bringing the price all the way into the consumer range
| changed the game. You may prefer higher performing, top-of-
| the-line-computer-requiring, headsets at a higher price
| point but consumer VR is a new and fast growing market
| segment. Any company spending their effort on such a
| headset is likely to find a vanishing market, as the
| quality of cheaper wireless devices will improve much
| faster than high end ones.
|
| Don't forget, the low end always eats the high end.
| kurthr wrote:
| Although likely a fast follower of Apple and FB, I think Google
| will be able to monetize their eye-tracking attention models of
| VR/MR users more effectively than Apple using their current
| advertising knowledge and user trust. FB will probably be more
| aggressive, but has lost a lot of trust so may not capture the
| younger more valuable users.
|
| https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-154/marketing-strate...
|
| Your ability to not click to avoid future advertising will no
| longer be effective. They will learn exactly what distracts the
| most of your (visual) attention to ads and will target you with
| the most effective ads for your attention model. Then they will
| sell that model to their advertisers to develop more effective
| ads for your cohort based on value. Your visual saccades (the
| order, time, return rate) are not really consciously
| controllable, while they provide huge insight into both your past
| exposure and future interest images and ideas.
| Fordec wrote:
| I have about as much faith in this as a Twitter API.
| romanovcode wrote:
| Google cannot do anything except search and ads. Every other
| project they did was a failure. I have absolutely zero trust in
| any new product they release.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Recently moved from more than a decade on Android to iPhone.
| Once the Stockholm syndrome wore off I realized how
| pathetically behind they are on mobile.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I'd add email. But your overall point stands.
| Andrex wrote:
| Whenever I transpose my comments to HN, I usually do some light
| editing. The following comment is unedited because this headline
| kinda fired me up.
|
| Considering how Google's treated AR and VR in the last 10 years,
| hyping people up then quietly pulling back support and finally
| cancellation after just 2-3 years, I don't see this going well.
|
| They had a toehold 6-10 years ago which they could have easily
| kept iterating on and making small marketshare gains, but I guess
| that wasn't good enough. Now instead of entering 2022 with 10-20%
| marketshare, a mature platform, and developer/user mindshare,
| they're starting the new year with none of that and the idea "Hey
| maybe we should try AR/VR stuff again."
|
| Get bent Google. You shouldn't have cancelled Daydream and killed
| the small amount of goodwill you were starting to cultivate.
| Lenovo got burned, developers got burned, users got burned. And
| they still want to try again?
|
| Instead of taking your Google Glass ball and running home with it
| after everyone was mean about the idea, maybe listen to the
| feedback and change the product? But no, despite Glass being
| introduced almost purely around consumer-targeted ideas and
| concepts, it's now an "Enterprise" product out of reach of us
| mere mortals.
|
| ARCore, with its many naming and branding changes, has also
| failed to catch on like Google hyped.
|
| Google, you're charging into battle with Apple and Zuck and you
| got a dildo made of American cheese. Good luck.
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkXnLUpXgAEz6Yg.jpg (via HBO's
| Succession)
| pjmlp wrote:
| Add SceneForm to it, announced with fanfare at IO and slowly
| forgotten.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| Not just forgotten, deprecated with no notice after my team
| built our product with a dependency on it.
|
| You might say, "why would you be so stupid to build your AR
| product on top of Google's primary, supported, promoted,
| first-class way of doing AR?" And I would say Apple hasn't
| fucked me over like this. In fact, Apple has continued
| investing in their AR offering and now makes Google's ARCore
| and SceneForm look like a fucking joke.
|
| Google Maps AR - oh yeah, that's an API feature of ARKit now.
| Want to have high precision location with Google ARCore? Go
| fuck yourself. (I'm directly quoting Google here, don't @ me
| for the language; when you're getting gaped by Google day
| after day, I guess some blue language slips in)
| [deleted]
| rvz wrote:
| Except they are trying again, but this time with the
| acquisition of North. [0]
|
| We'll see how this goes against what Meta and Apple has to
| offer for AR glassess.
|
| [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/30/google-acquires-north-
| augmen...
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Considering how Google's treated AR and VR in the last 10
| years_
|
| You mean how they've treated a large proportion of their
| customer-facing products?
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| i read the title, and thought of Google Reader, then came for
| the comments.
| rl3 wrote:
| > _Google, you're charging into battle with Apple and Zuck and
| you got a dildo made of American cheese. Good luck._
|
| Zuck's vision is trash to the point I question whether the
| man's had an original idea in his life, so I'm not completely
| discounting the American cheese monstrosity as somehow
| prevailing.
|
| I don't really care for Apple either, but I suspect they're
| going to "win" by virtue of focus and culture alone.
|
| Of course, if any of these three entities win, it is the world
| that loses. Rather, continues to lose--depending on how you
| look at it.
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| 100% I was a massive Google VR/AR adopter. Usually I'm a big
| iOS fan but I switched for a while because of Google's work
| there. I believe strongly that AR is the next major platform
| but I HIGHLY doubt Google will have a place in that market.
| They ignored Daydream and then killed it. ARCore is terrible to
| work with and pretty far behind ARKit and even Unity/Unreal's
| AR lib's. I'll never trust Google again given how terrible they
| have been to AR/VR.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Glass was not AR. It was a tiny screen you had to shift your
| focus to.
|
| I should change my usernames to glasswasnotar because I feel
| like I am always saying that when people talk about glass and
| ar
| dougmwne wrote:
| I disagree. It was and is an AR product.
|
| Re-watch this early promo video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErpNpR3XYUw
|
| There are several clear AR features displayed. There's a
| location based notification about the subway service upon
| getting close to the entrance. There's overlaid compass based
| walking directions. There's GPS based location identification
| and check-in. AR is more than just computer vision driven
| overlays. Though that tech wasn't available to be put in a
| HMD at the time, these GPS driven features absolutely were AR
| features and the original Glass should rightfully be
| considered the first AR consumer product.
|
| Furthermore, the product still exists as the Enterprise
| Edition 2 and this current version supports computer vison
| and object identification applications, further strengthening
| its AR use cases.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Sure if the experience of using it had been anything like
| that video it would have been AR, but it was not like that.
| I'm sure they wanted AR glasses but instead they built a
| tiny screen you could look at when you weren't looking at
| what was around you... kinda like a phone that you didn't
| have to hold.
| [deleted]
| zucked wrote:
| How is a tiny screen overlaid in an accessible field of
| vision, not totally obscuring your perception of reality, NOT
| "augmenting reality"? I agree it barely meets the threshold,
| but I don't write it off as not AR full stop.
| jayd16 wrote:
| It wasn't an overlay and wasn't powerful enough to do much
| with the camera in any realtime way. It was closer to a low
| powered smart watch that's mostly always in view.
| a4isms wrote:
| AR is colloquially understood to mean overlaying your field
| of vision with graphics that interact with reality in your
| field of vision.
|
| By way of a real-world example, military pilots have heads-
| up displays that overlay IDs of aircraft on the aircraft as
| they appear to the pilot. That's AR.
|
| My volvo has a heads-up display that show me my speed, the
| current speed limit, warnings, lane guidance... But none of
| that points to anything in my field of vision. Not AR.
|
| Mercedes also have heads-up displays, and while I don't own
| one, I saw a demonstration where when you are using
| adaptive cruise control, it highlights the car it is
| following. That's AR.
|
| The above is my lay understanding. If you buy this
| distinction between "heads up display" as a general term,
| and "AR" as a specific use of a heads up display, then
| Glass was not AR. It was just a heads-up display.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Glass had no overlay.
|
| You don't see reality and the screen at the same time. It
| is reality or the screen. (Just like a phone that isn't
| running an AR app)
|
| Looking at the screen does obscure your perception of
| reality because your eye has to change focus. The little
| prism was transparent but it may as well have been
| translucent because you couldn't focus on the screen and
| the world at the same time.
| panzagl wrote:
| Sounds like it was just shitty AR
| dwighttk wrote:
| Wasn't even that.
| ksec wrote:
| >Google, you're charging into battle with Apple and Zuck and
| you got a dildo made of American cheese. Good luck.
|
| This is rare on HN. But true. Google's new CEO still have a lot
| to prove. The problem with Google was they were not found upon
| a product DNA. They have very little if any product
| sensibility.
|
| At this rate, Google search may be first to be disrupted before
| Facebook. Apple has its cracks but still far too minor.
|
| It is also interesting this is finally the mainstream view, at
| least the top HN comment. Prior to 2016, people still believe
| AMP in good faith, Firefox compatibility was not Google's
| fault, ads by Google were Ok.
| eitland wrote:
| > At this rate, Google search may be first to be disrupted
| before Facebook. Apple has its cracks but still far too
| minor.
|
| After a few years of using DDG which is equally bad as Google
| but has less and less annoying ads I tried out Kagi last
| week.
|
| The difference is so big I don't care to verify with neither
| DDG nor Google: I know based on long experience how bad their
| results are.
|
| Kagi has so far been a breath of fresh air, a taste of how
| search used to work when Google actually found the things I
| asked for, not the thing an insanely annoying AI think I
| want.
| ksec wrote:
| Yes. And I forgot to mention in my original post, I only
| just realise very recently, in a lot of cases _every_
| single results in the first page are now Ads. Every single
| one. I have to scroll down to below the fold to get the
| result I wanted.
|
| I dont think any one at Google cares about UX anymore.
| N1H1L wrote:
| This is because in Google, you are promoted/feted based on
| products you create, not what you maintain unless that's
| bringing in so much ad revenue that you can be spun off into a
| separate division.
| potatolicious wrote:
| The moment I saw the headline I was itching to express this
| exact sentiment.
|
| Google seems unable to plan long-term - they had some of the
| most interesting VR and AR tech early-on but completely
| squandered the early lead by lacking any institutional
| commitment to the field.
|
| Google was among the first to put specialized sensors on
| devices to gain a structural understanding of your surrounding
| physical environment. They canned it.
|
| Google was among the first to ship accessible, affordable VR
| devices via Daydream. They canned that, too.
|
| Google's SLAM implementation was best-in-class for a while, and
| has basically failed to turn that into anything while FB caught
| up.
|
| The company as a whole seems to have no concept of long-term
| strategy. Every endeavor is dipped into with the most tepid of
| toes, and abandoned at the first sign of difficulty (see:
| Stadia, Allo, oh boy I can continue). A _ton_ of fantastic
| research and work goes into products that the company _should_
| continue investing losses in for long-term strategic advantage,
| but the company ends up pursuing the worst of both worlds:
| paying for the R &D and then changing strategies on a whim.
|
| I know the messaging thing is a dead horse but it deserves to
| be beaten some more: Google should be fielding an iMessage
| competitor by now, if only to complete the platform narrative,
| even if it will always lose to WhatsApp. But instead it has no
| iMessage competitor and has rebooted its messaging strategy 10x
| for no discernible results. The _minimum_ of what they needed
| to do was just to field a competent, stable messaging app that
| serves as a usable baseline for Android users... and they
| failed even that.
|
| And having been inside the sausage factory myself there's one
| _huge_ lever that can be pulled here: Google upper management
| needs to get _way_ more obsessive about products and long-term
| roadmaps.
|
| The reason why these projects die so easily is because they
| tend to be owned by mid-level managers and junior execs, a tier
| of the company where there is _intense_ turnover. Projects die
| when their patrons leave the company, get promoted, move orgs,
| or just generally lose interest. There is frequently no
| champion for the project besides whichever manager /junior exec
| owns it. If the company hopes to invest in a field long enough
| for it to actually bear fruit, the commitments need to come
| directly from the top.
|
| A lot of this is the hangover of Google+, whose shadow every
| project (even non-social media ones) lives under. The company
| seems desperately afraid of making multi-year commitments to
| things unless they are bearing immediate fruit, out of fear
| that they'll pull another G+, where failing ideas continued to
| get disproportionate investment via dictat. I don't know what
| the right solution to that is, but it certainly isn't what
| they're doing right now.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Tango did, 7 years ago, everything ARKit does today. All they
| had to do was loss-lead on a showstopper of a phone with one
| killer app. They basically stripped down Tango to create
| ARCore, and lost the SLAM space to Apple and Niantic. No one
| realizes it yet, but this is about as bad as Microsoft losing
| the web to Google.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Isn't Niantic something from Google?
|
| _checkshttps://nianticlabs.com/en/about/_
|
| Keyhole made what got renamed Google Earth when Google ate
| them, ten years later the core of that team started Niantic
| Labs inside Google, made Ingress, a few years later Niantic
| left Google (with funding from Google, Nintendo, and Pokemon)
| and made Pokemon Go. Niantic has acquihired a few companies
| working in related spaces.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| >Google let Niantic go.
|
| Oh, I didn't know that. That's even worse. Niantic is
| positioning itself to be a competitor to Apple in the
| global spatial map game.
|
| Explains why Go released on Android first, though. Neat. I
| hope that doesn't change now that they're running with
| 6d.ai.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I think Asus did have Tango phones but it wasn't quite
| powerful enough. It couldn't compete with sexier flagships of
| the same year.
| ilamont wrote:
| _Considering how Google's treated AR and VR in the last 10
| years, hyping people up then quietly pulling back support and
| finally cancellation after just 2-3 years, I don't see this
| going well._
|
| Not just AR/V like Glass. Web and mobile software, hardware,
| and platforms.
|
| We've seen so many projects launch with incredible hype and die
| on the vine a few years later or wither to insignificance from
| lack of customer support, developer resources, or a workable
| strategy. Nexus. Blogger. Stadia. Music. Plus. Wave.
|
| The lesson is clear: Google can't be trusted.
| clem wrote:
| Has Stadia died already?
| sciurus wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/10/google-stadias-
| salva...
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Now they can call it MetaGlass!
| Zak wrote:
| It seems to me that Google only iterates on things that are
| immediately successful. That doesn't work for something like
| consumer AR that hasn't really been done before; multiple
| iterations will be required to get it past the toy/demo/beta
| phase.
| fossuser wrote:
| Google seems unfocused - AR is an example of this, their
| messaging platforms and failure to leverage Google voice for
| 10yrs after the acquisition are too.
|
| I'd bet on Apple, FB, or some new entry (harder without the
| underlying OS).
|
| DeepMind is the most interesting thing coming out of Google
| imo.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| Google _is_ unfocused. That 's the how the company is
| designed. It's a federation of VPs, each trying to build a
| little fiefdom and buy a third bay area house. Sometimes this
| works well because it fosters competition, but there's a
| definite lack of coherency.
| ksec wrote:
| They wanted a letter starting with A to be the parent
| company of Google. It should have been ADHD and not
| Alphabet. /s
| azeirah wrote:
| :(
|
| Adhd people can be very focused
| fizwhiz wrote:
| > buy a third bay area house
|
| In palo alto / atherton no less.
| selestify wrote:
| Was that just a random number you threw out? Because it's
| depressing if even VPs can only afford three Bay Area
| homes.
| fossuser wrote:
| I'd guess a VP can afford just one? Median housing price
| is 3M in Palo Alto.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I mean a good senior engineer is making $450k+ per year,
| I don't know what a VP makes but it's gotta be pretty
| high? Anyone know?
| temporalparts wrote:
| I'm guessing Google VPs make ~5 mil a year, given that L8
| engineers make ~1 mil a year [0]
|
| [0] levels.fyi
| sombremesa wrote:
| There are huge issues with how these salaries are
| reported. When you include stock compensation especially:
| what about vesting schedules and taxes? You can leave a
| job (by choice or otherwise) where you worked for a year
| and were making "1 million a year" with less than $300k
| in total compensation.
|
| It feels like a little trick being played on the
| employees, kind of like unlimited PTO. I'm sure _some_
| people actually enjoy the full benefits of what they 're
| promised, but I'd be surprised if that's a majority.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _It feels like a little trick being played on the
| employees_
|
| It's a common trick.
|
| In the 1990's Bill Clinton famously categorized people
| who made $200,000 a year as "millionaires." Why? Because
| they "should" be able to save a million dollars within
| five years.
|
| People in power find it easy to play word games with
| other people's money.
| romanhn wrote:
| It's all fairly straightforward actually, as long as
| you're familiar with how compensation works at big
| companies (salary, stock, bonus, refreshers). Blind and
| levels.fyi have raised the transparency on comp quite a
| bit. $1M/year total compensation (that's annual comp, not
| the total four year vest) is reasonable for a
| L8/director-level at the tech giants. This is before tax
| of course, which is how literally everyone talks about
| compensation.
| [deleted]
| akomtu wrote:
| VPs start at about 2M/year before taxes. That doesn't buy
| you much in the Bay Area.
| romanhn wrote:
| That's a very odd take. There are very few homes one
| wouldn't be able to afford (yes, with a mortgage) at
| 2M/year.
| jkubicek wrote:
| I bought a $1MM house in the bay area on a salary 1/10th
| of that. $2MM/year TC buys you a heck of a lot of house.
| akomtu wrote:
| You probably meant you were given a loan to buy a house.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Yes, that's how people typically buy houses. Deeming a
| salary low if you can't buy a house with one year of
| after-taxes, after-expenses income, sounds rather insane
| to me.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| It's not impossible to "focus" Google but lets not pretend
| Google is making these decisions to focus on something or
| not. It's small groups of people or singular people who make
| these decisions and those visionaries can easily change their
| focus or be offered a more compelling role at a start up
| doing the same thing after they spend 12 months learning how
| to do it at Google.
|
| I don't love Facebook/Meta but it looks like they put a lot
| of eggs into the Metaverse bucket. Google has never really
| done that. They have dabbled and because its Google people
| assume its going to be big or meaningful. But once people
| internally make enough progress to get promoted and move
| around internally its not going to continue to be supported
| without guidance from the top and the top doesnt care about
| AR/VR/Metaverse. Or at least they havnt until now.
| potatolicious wrote:
| The two statements don't really work together:
|
| > It's small groups of people or singular people who make
| these decisions and those visionaries can easily change
| their focus or be offered a more compelling role
|
| True! All companies face this problem. Smart, capable
| people have options and frequently will decide to leave and
| do something else/go somewhere else.
|
| > but lets not pretend Google is making these decisions to
| focus on something or not
|
| This is where the disconnect is. As a company you decide
| what things are priorities, and you build teams to pursue
| those priorities in a way that is resilient to people
| leaving - even extremely senior leadership individuals.
|
| If a project withers and dies because a key player leaves,
| then it never had the company's focus. Part of effectively
| managing a company is to ensure your most important things
| don't have a low bus factor (or in Google's case, a bug
| factor of exactly one).
|
| MS, FB, Apple, etc, all have a record of being able to
| relentlessly pursue a particular goal despite being subject
| to the same workforce attrition forces that affect Google.
| fossuser wrote:
| I'm a little confused by your first sentence because it
| sounds like we're mostly in agreement?
|
| Google does a bunch of random things kind of haphazardly.
| Whether this is caused by incentive problems around promo
| or something else I don't know.
|
| I don't think they compare favorably to Apple, Zuckerberg,
| or modern Microsoft. I'd guess it comes from the top.
| folkhack wrote:
| > their messaging platforms and failure to leverage Google
| voice for 10yrs after the acquisition are too
|
| The Hangouts > Chat transition is exactly this. Objectively,
| they've made it worse and more buggy on their _own_ Android
| platform. Ever since the transition I talk to friends less on
| Google services. Many of us jumped to Discord
|
| Don't even get me going on the Gmail rollout...
|
| Google was once an innovator (search, Gmail, Docs) but I'm
| not expecting quality from any of their future product
| rollouts... _especially_ if it 's an existing product.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| This upsets me, because I genuinely liked GTalk and early
| Hangouts. The constant rebrands and iterations made me and
| my friends stop using G's chat products too.
|
| I too don't expect quality from anything Google anymore.
| It's become an untrustworthy brand.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah - I moved off every Google service during covid
| (switching all accounts to fastmail was the biggest pain,
| but once moved has been great).
|
| One nice thing I'll say is Google's data tools and privacy
| controls are great. It's very easy to export/delete/control
| your data there from the settings if you dig through them.
|
| The only thing I still use regularly for personal accounts
| is YouTube premium.
|
| Thankfully no friends use hangouts and I was able to move
| the stragglers to signal. I personally don't like discord
| either, but it's harder to get people out of that one (for
| now).
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Google was once an innovator (search, Gmail, Docs)
|
| Docs was from an acquisition.
| dvh wrote:
| I used to use Google docs because it was faster that
| starting libre office. Now Google docs starts 15s for
| empty document.
| sciurus wrote:
| FWIW on multiple browsers on many different computers
| I've never had Google docs take anywhere close to 15
| seconds to load.
| simonh wrote:
| I used to think that mattered, but I'm not so sure any
| more. After all the people that developed that product
| became part of Google, and they didn't become any less
| the innovators of it as a result.
|
| I think what matters with an acquisition is how it's
| managed and how the technology is developed. I think it's
| unarguable Google has put significant investment into
| docs and done a good job developing the product so I have
| no problem at this point giving them credit for it.
| moritonal wrote:
| It hurts to see it the accidental implication that DeepMind
| came out of Google. DeepMind was one of the UK's greater
| recent creations and it got bought/absorbed for a pittance in
| exchange for custom TPUs.
|
| I'll agree though that DeepMind would not have been able to
| exist really without Google's ongoing funding and hardware,
| so maybe it is Google's creation at this point.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that Google created it or
| anything. For better or worse they are owned and supported
| by Google now though.
| bsedlm wrote:
| wasn't Microsoft also in this race with the HoloLens?
| loeg wrote:
| Not past tense -- HoloLens is a product they charge real
| money for.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| And soon to be mass producing. They will be supplying 120k
| units the US army.
| iamricks wrote:
| I have a friend who works at a company that uses HoloLens,
| their use case is so that mechanics working on planes can
| be remotely guided by a more experienced mechanic (not sure
| if they're engineers?) on what they have to do to repair
| the aircraft.
| emptyfile wrote:
| What Microsoft did with Hololens is a great example of what
| Google should've done.
|
| But that actually requires management with a vision.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| Sounds like they read some headlines along the lines of
| "Meta... metaverse... blah, blah, blah..." and had a bout of
| tech-envy. Again.
| penjelly wrote:
| daydream was my intro to vr, now a proud index user. Im also
| sad they completely dropped support for it, imagine buying a
| new phone and it losing an awesome feature for seemingly no
| reason (yes i understand google wouldve had to spend money
| supporting it)
| abstrakraft wrote:
| Google projects are like Rule 34: if you can think of it,
| someone at Google is working on it.
| yosito wrote:
| The scary thing is, people are actually going to trust Google to
| augment their reality.
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