Strategic technology partners Google and Magic Leap, an augmented reality startup, are collaborating to develop immersive experiences that integrate the digital and physical realms
On Thursday, Magic Leap announced via blog post that the two organizations have reached a partnership agreement. A representative of Google validated the deal.
Although the announcement lacks specifics, it further suggests that Google may be preparing to enter the market for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies, which it has primarily ceded to competitors Apple and Meta, opening a new tab.
Magic Leap stated that the partnership would combine the Florida-based company’s optics and device fabrication expertise with Google’s technology platforms.
“We’ve already delivered a few iterations of augmented reality devices, so we’re actively delivering products, and Google has a long history of platform innovation,” Julie Larson-Green, chief technology officer of Magic Leap, told Reuters in an interview preceding the announcement.
“So we’re thinking, putting our expertise and their expertise together, there are lots of things we could end up doing,” according to her.
Google is an investor in Magic Leap, owned by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.
In the augmented reality (AR) headset industry, the startup struggled to find a consumer niche and has only recently begun investigating licensing or component production agreements.
Both Google and Magic Leap declined to comment on whether or not a consumer AR device was anticipated to result from the partnership.
Google has collaborated with Samsung Electronics, which has opened a new tab to advance mixed reality technologies since early last year. A Google spokesperson stated that this collaboration remained unaffected by the agreement with Magic Leap.
Larson-Green expressed enthusiasm for collaborating with the “cool AI tie-ins” that Google unveiled earlier this month at its annual developer conference about augmented reality.
In a video at that event, Google demonstrated Project Astra, an artificial intelligence agent, by having an individual don a prototype pair of spectacles and ask the agent questions about what they were seeing. The agent responded to two formats: audio and digital text superimposed on the lenses.
This functionality is comparable to what Meta has in store for its Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, to which an AI assistant was added last year, and a software update was released in April that enables the agent to identify objects perceived by the wearer through audio.
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Resuming the production of augmented reality (AR) spectacles by Google would represent a meaningful development in the corporation’s inconsistent and sporadic association with the technology.
Google initiated what it claimed to be an augmented reality (AR) revolution over a decade ago with the introduction of its Google Glass smart eyewear. In 2012, the company unveiled the device in a lavish demonstration in which skydivers utilized the glasses to livestream a leap onto a San Francisco building. Such was the level of enthusiasm at the time.
However, the product’s cumbersome design and privacy concerns infuriated consumers to the extent that those who donned it were occasionally referred to as “glassholes.”
In 2015, Google withdrew from the consumer market and discontinued its enterprise market presence.
However, the company returned two years ago with a sneak peek of a new pair of spectacles that, according to the company, would display real-time conversation translations in American Sign Language, English, Mandarin, and Spanish.
When Google laid off hundreds of employees in its hardware divisions in January, including most of its augmented reality team, the project’s future became uncertain.
