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Google Glass 3.0? Google acquires smart glasses maker North
Google Hardware's latest acquisition is North, a wearables computing company that most recently was making smart glasses that seemed like a successor to Google Glass. Google Hardware SVP Rick Osterloh announced the purchase on Google's blog, saying, "North's technical expertise will help as we continue to invest in our hardware efforts and ambient computing future."
North developed and released a pair of smart glasses called "Focals," which came the closest we've seen so far to smart glasses that looked like normal glasses. First, the company didn't neglect the "glasses" part of "smart glasses" and provided the frames in a range of styles, sizes, and colors, with support for prescription lenses. The technology was noticeably less invasive, too. Google Glass's display surface was a transparent block distractingly placed in front of the users' face, but Focal's display surface was the glasses' lens itself. A laser projector poked out from the thicker-than-normal temple arms and fired into the lens, which has a special coating, allowing the projection to reflect light into the eye.
[...] Google's smart glasses contribution was, of course, the infamous Google Glass, which launched in 2012 and basically shut down as a consumer product about two years later. (North CEO Stephen Lake actually called Google Glass "a massive failure" in a 2019 tech talk. Awkward!) Most people would think of the product as dead, but Google quietly pivoted Glass to be an enterprise product for assembly-line workers, mechanics, doctors, and other professions that might benefit from hands-free computing. New Glass hardware came out as recently as 2019, with the "Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2," which featured a modern 10nm Qualcomm SoC. With Apple reportedly building a set of smart glasses, the consumer market will probably heat up again soon.
It's back.
Also at BBC.
Previously: Google Glass 'Enterprise Edition': Foldable, More Rugged and Water-Resistant
Intel Abandons Vaunt AR (Augmented Reality) Smartglasses
Intel's Vaunt Augmented Reality Smartglasses Concept Lives on at Canadian Company North
"North Focals" $1000 Smartglasses Reviewed
Related: Apple Glasses Leaks and Rumors: Here's Everything We Expect to See
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Thursday July 02 2020, @02:37PM (3 children)
Seriously, it's one thing to have a device that people use to make calls, take photos, etc. that can be used to record people all the time. It's also, very obvious when they do that with a cellphone. It's not obvious when done with something like the google glasses. Which is part of why people hated the idea of it. Hopefully, people still hate the idea of it.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @02:43PM (1 child)
This is why apple is planning to use LIDAR rather than cameras in their glasses, and some others don't have cameras at all. HMDs might end up being preeminent in the future, with "brain-computer interfaces" using portable EEG or EMG as an interface.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @02:48PM
No cameras = shitty coward device
(Score: 4, Funny) by acid andy on Thursday July 02 2020, @03:57PM
Once a glasshole, always a glasshole.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2020, @03:25PM (7 children)
If consumer market for smart glasses heats up, then CCTV surveillance will be a privacy heaven by comparison.
Just imagine the flood of requests for "maybe witnessing" video-clips coming from law enforcement 'because investigations'; FBI being pissed on Apple for not unlocking a phone?... bah, that's a trifle. And if you think they won't, remember they are already doing it, using genealogy/genome sequencing sites [nature.com]
Fingers crossed for this to fail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday July 02 2020, @03:50PM (5 children)
As long as the smart glasses properly geo tag the video with GPS location, that makes it easier to query who may have witnessed something that the state wishes to persecute.
Especially if several people witnessed a police misconduct incident.
Win can we expect more amusing Karen videos. Especially the ones with extra psycho, hold the sanity.
How soon will new smart watches have cameras? While I can make and answer calls on my Fossil Gen 5, I can't do video calls. Wrist worn cameras would open interesting opportunities.
What about smart cameras concealed on people's clothing? Then the police would not know to shine a flashlight into the lens in a feeble effort to blind the camera.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday July 02 2020, @06:01PM (1 child)
You meant, prosecute, right?
Yeah, no, persecute is definitely the right word. Or stalker might be a good one, too. Police need to do their homework, not have easy access to peer into our private lives.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday July 02 2020, @06:43PM
I meant persecute. Prosecute is one of the mechanisms they use to do that. Extra judicial forms of punishment, such as harassment, citations, beatings and shootings are other means depending on how disrespectful one is.
More cameras are only going to hold police and Karens and Road Ragers more accountable.
But if cameras everywhere is good for the goose (law enforcement) then it is good for the gander (citizens).
Law enforcement cameras should be mandated everywhere. Not using one, even accidentally on purpose, should strip one of any qualified immunity. This serves to motivate making sure one's camera is operational and operating just as much as one might make sure their bullet proof vest is in good condition, or their firearm is clean and in working order.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 02 2020, @07:09PM (1 child)
A few years ago there was a riot in Vancouver. I no longer remember the reason. It might have been the aftermath of a significant organized sports event.
Most people acted decently but some significant fraction vandalized and stole.
Subsequently the police issued a public call for cell phone footage. Enough people responded that the police could identify just about every act of vandalism and theft. They spent the next few months tracking down the vandals and thieves. They did not need data from surveillance cameras.
-- hendrik
(Score: 4, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday July 02 2020, @07:16PM
I think of surveillance cameras, owned by private businesses and shops, as a defense against the police. And possibly rioters. (which are a different thing than protesters)
I have very mixed feelings about surveillance cameras owned by big brother.
We're already extremely close to having telescreens in our homes. (Alexa, turn on the living room lights.)
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday July 02 2020, @11:42PM
We can get Trump re-elected with all the proliferation of videos of The Knockout Game and other instances of violence and harassment undertaken by a criminal minority of Blacks and upper middle-class Jews and Whites dressed in Antifa colors.
You go ahead and disband your police departments. Those cops can bail their Jew-run shithole cities and work for a city in which the police budget is actually increasing, with plenty of popular support for the police cause. Then we'll gawk smugly at what happens your self-policed progressive urban utopias as they halt and catch fire all around us.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday July 06 2020, @02:40PM
CCTVs in stores is just the price of doing business. CCTVs on every corner like in the UK, is dystopian. Smart glasses as prevalent as cellphones that are recording all the time. That's futuristic dystopian fantasies. Here's hoping we don't create said futuristic dystopian system.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday July 02 2020, @03:42PM (2 children)
I predict North employees have 3 years at the most. As for me, I'll add that particular brand as one never to buy or use, along with Vuze and countless other previous Google acquisitions.
Incidentally, when is that antitrust lawsuit coming? We're all waiting...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 02 2020, @06:49PM (1 child)
WWGD?
What Would Google Do?
Most likely, take an interest in this project. For a while. Then abandon it.
What's wrong here?
Google has perverse incentives. No incentive to do the daily drudge work of maintaining and improving existing products. Too much incentive to create new products. Even products that overlap with existing products. Sometimes even 100% overlap.
Result: and endless treadmill of new products making your existing familiar products obsolete. Remember Google's attempt to replace Gmail with WhatWasItCalled? a few years ago?
It's not that I'm old and set in my ways -- it's that I expect some stability in products unless there is some really good reason to discontinue an old product in favor of a new but otherwise similar replacement product.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Thursday July 02 2020, @09:03PM
But what is the extra incentive they have to keep replacing their products? With Micro$oft I always said they kept changing the interface to make money on training courses.
I can understand it for products that people pay for, so they have to keep buying the replacement (like Apple do), but for free software where the customer is the real product, why risk replacing something when you already have a user base?
Or are attention spans so short these days and fads so popular that no-one wants to stick with the same product for more than a year or so anymore?
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2020, @02:40AM
I imagine when these things hit the market things will go south?