Google's AR Software Leader is Out Over the Company's 'Unstable Commitment and Vision'

Mark Lucovsky, the former head of operating systems on Google's augmented reality team, has left the company. From a report: In a tweet on Monday, Lucovsky says "changes in AR leadership and Google's unstable commitment and vision" contributed to his decision. Lucovsky's departure adds to the numerous challenges Google's AR team has faced in recent months, including a round of layoffs and the resignation of Google's former head of VR, Clay Bavor. In June, a report from Insider indicated that Google has given up on its plans to build AR glasses, codenamed Project Iris. It's also discontinued the enterprise edition of Google Glass.

How many projects did he put here...

[greytree]

... before joining them himself?

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Why is Google so bad at starting successful projects?

Re:How many projects did he put here...

[HBI]

It's not creating useful things that is the problem. It's the inability to support them effectively, probably closely related to the corporate culture there. It's not a software company per se. They've designed everything so that very little customer interaction with Google is necessary or possible for their services, and it shows. They also have the millstone of a consistent pattern of not reliably supporting things, cancelling things that people are actually using without any real migration path. Once you lose credibility, it's hard to get back. Most companies would kill to have captured market share like that, but Google doesn't really care.

I really don't know what the solution is for Google. Perhaps sticking to their primary business of serving up ads, rather than delivering products, which is the thing they suck at.

Re:How many projects did he put here...

[r1348]

They simply have no ability for long term committment.
Projects in Google are either immediate world-shattering successes, or they get the axe. Anything that would be profitable mid to long term is simply inconceivable there.

Re:

[PCM2]

Projects in Google are either immediate world-shattering successes, or they get the axe.

And when is the last time Google had a "world-shattering success," immediate or otherwise? Search? It didn't even invent YouTube, it bought it.

Re:

[PCM2]

And before you say Android, Google bought that, too.

Never Develop for Google.

[nevermindme]

Glasses technology for the equipment services industry needs long term stable partners, not a cloud company in constant disarray chasing the new shiny in twenty different fields at the same time. Tech with a tablet and some smart glasses are closer to checklist, documentation and the part ordering interface. I would feel quite burned if I was in the ecosystem and the product offering went away. Does google not know to spin off crap at low valuation to another sucker for a tax loss instead of declaring the product dead?

Google has commitment or vision?

[gweihir]

News to me. Claiming they have unstable commitment and vision is giving them far too much credit. I think observable history has now conclusively shown that the only "vision" google has is "make more money" and the only commitment is to their pile of gold.

Stability? Google? The Valley Culture?

[Tablizer]

It's all Move Fast and Break Things. You can't expect stability there.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

It's all Move Fast and Break Things. You can't expect stability there.

That's one thing you can give Apple some credit for. Sure, they may have some mediocre ideas, but they tend to stick with them way longer than anybody else. They kept the unfortunately-too-early Newton line going for a long time, and at least in the process they got experience with mobile computing and ARM.

Re: Stability? Google? The Valley Culture?

[Dixie_Flatline]

I know this is mostly a joke, but Facebook is remarkably stable despite that culture. I mean that both in the scaling/website sense (Threads may be hot trash, but it ingested 100 million users in a week and stayed up) and in the financial/social sense.

The reality is that Google only cares about how many ads they can serve to you, and after developing something for a while, if they can't figure out a way to serve you additional ads, the project is axed.

100% stable with no-commitment

[kiviQr]

Big 4 understands that maintaining 1000s of great devs is small cost compared to having these devs invent something that might compete with them.

Interesting that both Google and Microsoft exited

[SuperKendall]

It's interesting to me that both Google and Microsoft gave up on the AR space entirely (even the enterprise space).

I wonder if they were just too concerned about Apple (or combo of Apple/Meta!) sucking all the oxygen out the the market for them? Of if they truly saw insurmountable obstacles for the space.

Kind of strange to think that Meta and Apple are the only ones left to compete there, I was sure Google would be back with something. Not for many years then it sounds like, if ever.

Re:

[not flu]

They were in too early and lost patience before technology caught up with the promise of the concept. It still hasn't. I have my hopes and doubts about Apple but I do get the impression they're serious about it so I expect them to succeed long term. Meta just bought Oculus who were already doing the much easier thing (VR) instead of the harder thing (AR) so they had something that actually works and does something people want much earlier than companies focusing on AR. Once you get truly good enough VR you

Re:

[SuperKendall]

VR I think is kind of a dead end, really mostly for gaming or static "experiences" and not that useful for much else.

AR is where all of the really interesting stuff can occur...

I agree that technology has not yet caught up with the promise of the concept, but I think Apple has actually got a real MVP (minimum viable product) in terms of AI. You have to be able to control/interact without controllers. You have to be able to have the system aware of surroundings. You need to be able to understand where a us