[MikeTheRocker]

I'm hoping they're building a commodity AR/VR operating system -- essentially spatial Android. They've already announced a partnership with Samsung and Qualcomm so I've got to imagine some interesting hardware is coming soon.

[vineyardmike]

Considering they just gutted their AR team I wouldn’t hold my breath on this one. Too bad they couldn’t wait for Apple to launch the Vision Pro, because I bet they’d get a lot more excitement now that the press is out.

[zmmmmm]

Seems likely the team was gutted specifically because they are refocusing on a new strategy.

[zmmmmm]

It's an interesting test for them. Essentially, it's a free hit - low expectations, few constraints, lots of latitude to throw out prior work, open ended opportunity to be creative and innovate, a clear baseline provided by Apple for them to benchmark success against and little to no regulatory scrutiny. Basically, one of the few opportunities they will ever got for a zero baggage, green field project where, if they actually have the talent and the will power, they could hit something out of the park. Will they do it? Will they not?

[chaostheory]

Hopefully, they won’t give up and toss it in less than 3 years. The Samsung brand should also be front and center, or consumers won’t have the confidence to buy it.

[redleader55]

Isn't Meta the one building the AR/VR operating system? Quest runs Android and they are upstreaming the 3D stuff, I think.

[solardev]

Meh, I hope they don't chase the VR train and instead focus on making Search actually usable again. It's soooo bad these days and actively getting worse, with ever more ads and SEO crap.

[seoulmetro]

You seem to be under the impression that Google search got bad by accident? They killed it on purpose. They killed image search on purpose too.

Google does not accidentally do things with their core products, they choose and then execute negative user experience for their own benefits.

[MikeTheRocker]

With >150,000 employees, I think they can probably do both

[SllX]

I’ll believe that when they stop destroying search.

Google Cache’s death has been widely reported but the custom date filter just plain stopped rendering on my iPhone and iPad last week. There are some kinds of queries which really only function on Google with that in working order.

[bdd8f1df777b]

WoW, I thought my VPN failed (to properly traverse the GFW) when the date filter just didn’t show up on iOS.

[SllX]

Nope, just broke for no apparent reason after working perfectly fine for years and continues to work on the desktop. By this point in time, I've been cynical of Google for longer than I was a fan, but every nail that strikes at the heart of the Google that was cool still hurts to see.

[solardev]

Well, so far, they haven't really improved either one in a long time...