Google Glass 2 – Buying TED

More about Gemini than Metaverse.

• Google clearly paid the organisers of TED Talks to demo its developments for the Metaverse, but to be fair to Google, it showed good progress in improving the proposition of the Metaverse and head-mounted displays.
• Google bought its way into a TED Talks session and used its time to demonstrate its AR and VR hardware and how they have been brought to life with Gemini.
• This is where Google has been very clever, as it has used Gemini and processing in the cloud to make up for the shortcomings of the hardware, which remain a major barrier for everyone in this space.
• Google’s strategy for the Metaverse has three elements, which are the Android XR software it is developing with Samsung, an in-house pair of smart glasses and a virtual reality device being developed by Samsung.
• Stitching all of these elements together is Gemini, which, if it works as well as advertised (big if), goes a long way towards improving the user experience and making up for hardware shortcomings.
• Google’s glasses (Glass 2?) are a regular pair of glasses like Meta’s Ray-Ban, except that they also have a very small and low-specification display.
• This is to ensure that the glasses stay as small and light as well as have an acceptable battery life.
• This is why almost all of the processing is being done off-device in the smartphone or the cloud.
• The glasses demonstration was actually quite good, with Gemini being able to take inputs and give outputs in many languages, as well as recall things that the camera had seen moments before.
• This immediately raises the same privacy concerns that caused CoPilot to delay the Recall feature that does the same thing, but on a PC.
• Most of the demonstrations were utilising what Gemini could see and what it could do as opposed to the glasses themselves, as the glasses are nothing special when it comes to the hardware.
• Gemini was also good at recognising and understanding text and diagrams in a book as well as playing music from an album viewed in the glasses, but these were obviously meticulously rehearsed beforehand.
• Google also brought on the upcoming virtual reality device from Samsung, where it demonstrated more immersive use cases like visiting a destination in Google Earth, as well as Gemini helping with work-related tasks.
• These demonstrations are the product of the Android XR collaboration that was launched with Qualcomm and Samsung last December, and I think that this offering is competitive with the other players, such as Meta and Apple, against whom it is going to be fighting for The Metaverse.
• Android XR is also the only one that has a hint of being open, although those who choose to use it are likely to be locked into the Google Ecosystem as they are when they make smartphones.
• Even in this limited scope, this openness is important as everyone else currently operates in a self-contained and vertically integrated silo which is exactly the wrong thing to have if the Metaverse is going to take off.
• If the Metaverse is to become the place where users live their digital lives rather than smartphones, every device needs to be able to access the services of the other players as they can on smartphones.
• This is not the trajectory that is being taken today, and unless this changes, The Metaverse is unlikely to ever become a mainstream environment.
• Google has made some good progress on this front, and as long as it is less religious about putting its ecosystem front and centre of Android XR Metaverse devices, it could attract good traction.
• The problem here is that this is how Google monetises the investments that it makes in this area, and so there needs to be a delicate balance.
• The net result is that this does not represent a big advance in making the Metaverse a reality, as the barriers to entry remain as high as ever, but Google is cleverly using Gemini to greatly improve the experience.
• If it works well and Google sells a few glasses (as Meta has done), this could help kick-start acceptance of smart glasses, but there remains a huge hill to climb.
• For example, if Metaverse device shipments were to double every year for the next 7 years, they would still be just 20% of the smartphone market, indicating just how economically irrelevant the sector remains.
• However, if the smartphone is ever to shed its crown, then this is the leading candidate to take over, making it an insurance policy worth having for those currently making their living from smartphones.