Google's Dysfunctional AR Division Plans Apple Vision Pro Clone With Samsung

A new report from Business Insider (paywalled) describes how Google's employees were "frustrated" at Google's lack of progress when the Vision Pro was unveiled and provides a glimpse of what Google's current plans for an AR product are. Ars Technica reports: The BI report details how Google's latest dead project, Iris, "was beset by a constantly shifting strategy and lack of focus from senior leadership." After "conversations with seven current and former employees close to Google's AR efforts," Business Insider quotes a few of those anonymous employees, with one saying, "Every six months there was a major pivot in the program." At one point Google was working on a pair of custom silicon chips for the glasses' display and compute power and then gave up on the idea of custom chips. That work was apparently near completion, with one person saying, "I think it's weird when you convince yourselves you need to build custom silicon, and then you go and do that -- and then flush it down the toilet."

Display problems led the team to switch from regular eyeglasses to sunglasses and then back again, and the team couldn't settle on a color or monochrome display. Google showed off a pair of Iris glasses at Google I/O that could translate spoken language, then quickly canned the idea. You might think Bavor leaving in February would be good, considering how little traction the AR division managed in the marketplace, but apparently the executive's departure created a "state of chaos" in the division. Google's next AR pivot is a partnership with Samsung, another company that has dabbled in AR/VR for years yet has no current product line. Google, Samsung, and Qualcomm have already vaguely announced an Apple-fighting mixed-reality partnership in February. Plans to actually launch a headset were reportedly delayed in the wake of the Vision Pro unveiling due to the headset not being competitive. The new launch target is sometime around summer 2024, but the report says that "some employees are skeptical [that] will be enough time to launch a product that will wow the public."

According to the report, Samsung wants to follow its usual strategy and "build a headset device similar to Apple's Vision Pro." The project is apparently code-named "Moohan," and if you couldn't already guess from this lineup of companies, it will run Android. Despite acquiring hardware companies like the Micro-LED manufacturer Raxiom and smart glasses-maker North, Google now wants to "pivot to software" and follow the Android model. The partnership with Samsung makes Moohan the most likely project to actually hit the market, but Google still has two other competing XR projects. Raxiom also is apparently still around and works under Paul Greco, Magic Leap's former chief technology officer. Iris' software work has moved to "a new team" and is being turned into a software project codenamed "Betty" that Google wants to pitch to other manufacturers. Samsung doesn't want any of these other parts of Google or other hardware competitors to be privy to its Vision Pro clone, so the three teams are all firewalled off from each other and have to compete for resources. One current employee described the whole situation as "a weird bureaucratic mess."

Pivot

[war4peace]

Looks like that division pivoted so often, they turned into a whirligig.

Re:

[gweihir]

Well, stupid idea is still stupid and will remain stupid unless we have much better tech than today, so they may as well just "run in circles, scream and shout", because they sure as hell cannot do anything useful.

Less than 1 year?

[Vermyndax]

It took Apple about 10 years to pull together the Vision Pro solution. Google and Samsung think they can pull it off in less than 1 year? Ok.

Re:

[dbialac]

I don't see these being comfortable for 8 hours or more a day. Either that, or welcome to the matrix. We just need to add some tubes that go into your body.

Re:

[BishopBerkeley]

They are not! Adding weight balance to the system was a big part of the project! This is only for Apple to understand how people will ultimately elect to use these devices. It's a start, not an end.

Re:

[saloomy]

The electronics will shrink and get better, and done right, it can be comfortable for a while. Long enough? Probably not at first. Certainly not enough to go between sips of coffee I typically do at my desk, probably not gonna happen with those things on my head.

Samsung though, I really do wonder why Apple do not make them sign a non-compete clause given all the business they give them (or give that manufacturing to another vendor)? Why empower your vendor to become your competitor?

Re: Less than 1 year?

[BishopBerkeley]

Until now itâ(TM)s been capacity and competition. There arenâ(TM)t enough vendors out there to replace Samsung as a supplier. Apple did move all cpu production away from samsung to tsmc as soon as it was feasible.

Re:

[NoMoreACs]

The electronics will shrink and get better, and done right, it can be comfortable for a while. Long enough? Probably not at first. Certainly not enough to go between sips of coffee I typically do at my desk, probably not gonna happen with those things on my head.

Samsung though, I really do wonder why Apple do not make them sign a non-compete clause given all the business they give them (or give that manufacturing to another vendor)? Why empower your vendor to become your competitor?

You really think that Google will stick to it long enough, or Samsung will stop selling prototypes-as-products long enough, or that Qualcomm can make silicon fast and low power enough, to beat Apple?

By the time they are on AndroVision 1.0, Apple will already be selling Vision Pro 4, Vision Air 2 (starting at $1999), and the $599 Vision SE, all running VisionOS 4.3.

But that won't happen; because Google will have long-since abandoned the Project, and Qualcomm will still not be able to get more than 30 minutes

Re:

[dbialac]

They've been trying to work the goggle thing out for decades. Go ask a skier or anyone who uses a face shield.

Re:

[nicubunu]

It looks doable. Apple needed so much time because they didn't know from the start what is their final goal and tried probably a lot of approaches. Samsung has a much clearer goal: to produce a device similar to the one sold by Apple (features, design, price and such).

Re:

[GuB-42]

And most of it may have been spent just waiting when it is the right time to launch, based on the current state of the technology and the state of the market.

Now, competitors know what tech is available, and Apple essentially did the market research for them. So it is just a matter of coming up with an implementation.

Re:

[alvinrod]

I think it may not be quite that easy, because Apple is using their own chips. I don't know how much special sauce is involved in Apple's technology, but the fact that would be competitors can't just grab some commodity off the shelf parts to quickly cobble something similar together suggests that being able to match Apple isn't something that can be done overnight. A company like Samsung certainly can both design and fab their own chips that accelerate whatever workloads AR needs to work, but if they don't

Re:

[NoMoreACs]

And most of it may have been spent just waiting when it is the right time to launch, based on the current state of the technology and the state of the market.

Now, competitors know what tech is available, and Apple essentially did the market research for them. So it is just a matter of coming up with an implementation.

Riiight. . .

Re:Less than 1 year?

[AmiMoJo]

Google Glass came out a decade ago, in 2013. They have been working on AR for a long time.

They just had to wait for Apple to make a $3,500 price tag and strapping a full size headset to your face to become acceptable before they could release a decent product. Well, it remains to be seen if Apple's hardware is accepted by the market - if you watch videos of the announcement, the shocked groan from the crowd when the price is announced is clearly audible.

Re:

[RedK]

> They just had to wait for Apple to make a $3,500 price tag and strapping a full size headset to your face to become acceptable before they could release a decent product.

Ah yes, people who didn't buy Google Glass because they thought they looked awkward and ugly are going to walk around in oversized ski goggles that cost 3500$. For sure.

I fear some of these companies are hard stuck on the "We can" rather than "should we ?".

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Even now, don't underestimate the power of the Apple reality distortion field.

They sell laptops where the CPU, RAM, and SSD are all soldered to the motherboard and impossible to upgrade or repair. Even the little lid closed sensor has a serial number that is paired with the motherboard so you can't replace it yourself.

They love dongles too. Practicality has nothing to do with it. Their top of the range mouse only charges upside down.

Re:

[mrfaithful]

I remember when google glass was invite only the sheer hatred and vitriol for the project because of (probably quite true and reasonable) fear of "glassholes" recording everything they look at. There were people planning violent vigilante retribution on anyone they saw invading their personal light space. It always astounded me that google focused on this aspect more than anything else it could do since it was the thing I least wanted out of a product I barely cared about. So the public's first look at the

Re:

[mjwx]

It took Apple about 10 years to pull together the Vision Pro solution. Google and Samsung think they can pull it off in less than 1 year? Ok.

Pretty much.

10 years spent at Apple is a few months at an engineering company because they aren't spending most of their time making sure it's ideologically pure and incompatible with anything else.

Besides, its been done, Oculus anyone? I went to a video game themed pub in London last year where they had 3 booths set up with Oculus setups. Also Google have a leg up here as Google Glass was years ago.

So Apple is late to the party and I suspect it's going to flounder like all the other products that

The headline is confusing

[RitchCraft]

"Dysfunctional Google's AR Division Plans Apple Vision Pro Clone With Samsung." - There, that sounds better.

How much are they paid to flush that money?

[whoever57]

I expect the people who keep "pivoting" and flushing money down the drain are pulling multi-million dollar salaries for their bad decisions.

How much does a chip design cost these days? Upwards of $100M? Although it probably saved a few million dollars by not making masks.

OK, so sunk cost fallacy and all that, but the original decisions were bad if a pivot is needed.

Yawn

[BishopBerkeley]

Google would do better by hiring good product designers and keeping them so that they can eventually get ahead of the curve. They are counting on reproducing the Android experience with the AR headset, too, but this will be a much harder sell. Integration into the Android ecosystem will not be as enticing or as easy as integration into the Apple ecosystem.

Re:

[narcc]

Integration into the Android ecosystem will not be as enticing or as easy as integration into the Apple ecosystem.

Why? What possible advantage do you think Apple has here in "ecosystem integration"?

I personally see the "Apple ecosystem" as a bad thing. I certainly wouldn't want to find myself trapped there, certainly not for a ridiculous product like the iGoggles or whatever it's called. A VR headset can do AR, sure, but it can't do it well.

If we're going to see AR take off, it's not going to come from a laughably clunky product like Apple's face huger. It need to look more like the original Google Glass or somethi

Re: Yawn

[BishopBerkeley]

There is no android ecosystem. There is a Samsung ecosystem, or a Google ecosystem. The android market is fractured, and that benefits Apple.

Re:

[narcc]

Vendor lock-in isn't a good thing. It's amazing that there's anyone out there willing to defend that!

There is a Samsung ecosystem, or a Google ecosystem.

No, there's a Samsung ecosystem and a Google ecosystem, among others. Samsung's things might be exclusive to their hardware, sure, but even if you have a Samsung phone, you can still use Google's apps and services. I'd hardly call that "fractured".

Let's take a look at what you can do with sensible AR hardware today outside of Apple's prison garden:

Android Desktop modes are still in the experimental stage,

Re:

[BishopBerkeley]

Then why are Google and Samsung collaborating with the aim of replicating Apple's VR set the same way they copied iOS? I'm not disputing what you say. It's all true, but, following your logic, one can only conclude that Google and Samsung are making a mistake by emulating Apple.

It is indeed true that Apple is not original technologically, but their prowess for integration into a formidable, functional design is what makes them the company to copy.

If the rest of the field so far ahead, as you say, then w

Re:

[narcc]

Then why are Google and Samsung collaborating with the aim of replicating Apple's VR set

There's no real evidence of that at all. Still, if that's really what they're doing, it's going to flop just as hard as Apple's ridiculous thing. It's far too clunky and obtrusive. After seeing what's possible with lightweight AR glasses, it's clear that Apple's approach is a dead-end.

I didn't have high expectations for Apple's AR thing, but I really expected them to do better than an overpriced also-ran VR headset with an impossibly short battery life. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they relea

Re:

[BishopBerkeley]

Have you read the heading of the thread, for fuck's sake? It says that Google and Samsung want to clone Apple's vision pro.

Re:

[narcc]

I love how you trust the headline implicitly. Read the article. It's hardly an established fact.

Re:

[nicubunu]

Those ecosystems are not walled and will interact with each other, as parts of a larger (android) ecosystem. On a Samsung device you can use the Google Play store, all the Google apps, any 3-rd party app store and almost any app written for Android. Also, you can use any charger, earplug or other peripheral device.

Re:

[Freischutz]

Those ecosystems are not walled and will interact with each other, as parts of a larger (android) ecosystem. On a Samsung device you can use the Google Play store, all the Google apps, any 3-rd party app store and almost any app written for Android. Also, you can use any charger, earplug or other peripheral device.

Yay!!! So there will be Windows, Linux and Apple drivers? for a moment there I was afraid this thing would only work within the Android monoculture.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Samsung phones come with Google Play and Samsung's own app store. They are compatible with all Android accessories, which in practice are mostly just standard USB devices with a C plug (card readers, flash drives, DACs, thermal cameras, hubs, mice and keyboards, floppy drives) or standard Bluetooth devices.

Google devices are the same, minus the Samsung app store, but most of the Samsung apps are on Google Play anyway.

There very much is an Android ecosystem.

pride goeth before a fall

[Walt Dismal]

Google has management problems masked by the ad revenue. I've personally encountered some smug morons in the exec ranks. I wish I could tell the stories but basically there are some people there with undeserved elevated opinions of themselves and even with a high academic degree are victims of Dunning Krueger. So the VR screwups are no surprise. It may not end as badly as Zuck's VR money sink is headed, but still...

Nothing changes

[uarch]

âGoogle's latest dead project [â¦], "was beset by a constantly shifting strategy and lack of focus from senior leadership."â(TM)

So, in other words, nothing has changed since I last worked with Google X on their second (third?) version of Glass.

That project felt like it was being run by a bunch of grad students who didnâ(TM)t actually want to graduate because they were having too much fun living in the dorms.

D' oh!

[Aighearach]

In before they cancel it!!!

Dysfunction is the hint

[ByTor-2112]

Maybe all the dysfunction is a hint that no one wants this outside of a small niche market. Apple doesn't actually have a product yet, either, just a demo.

Re:

[rainer_d]

That may very well be the truth - but OTOH, despite the price tag, early users acknowledge that it is almost an out-of-body experience that is hard to put a price-tag on.

The availability of trial devices in the Stores will be key.

I have absolutely no doubt that no one but Apple can produce something like this in the next couple of years.

It seems like no-one at Google can follow through with a project that takes longer than six months before they have enough.

We want Google Glass

[leets]

If the creep factor has gone, please bring it back.
Maybe use AI to fix the privacy issues.