How did Google VR fail before the metaverse era?

Source: Geek Park

Authors: Zhang Wen, Jing Yu

When Microsoft and Facebook, now rebranded as Meta, boldly announced their entry into the metaverse, Google remained relatively low-key but quietly reorganized its internal innovative research lab, Google Labs.

The reorganization of Google Labs includes existing AR and VR businesses, Project Starline (holographic video calls), the Area 120 internal incubator, and other "high-potential, long-term" projects. The new team will be led by veteran Google Vice President Clay Bavor and will report directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

As one of the earliest developers of AR glasses and having sold over 100 million mobile VR headsets globally, Google should have been a leader in this wave of the "metaverse." However, the reality is that in both VR and AR, Google has been "early to rise but late to the fair." This raises the question of what fundamentally caused Google to fall behind Facebook in the "metaverse."

"Daydreams" on the Beach

In May 2016, at Google's annual developer conference held at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, after Sundar Pichai and several executives introduced the smarter Google Assistant, Clay Bavor took the stage to introduce the long-rumored Google VR headset and platform—Daydream VR.

That should have been Clay Bavor's moment of glory. After 11 years at Google, this guy, who looks like a typical coder from the TV show "Silicon Valley," finally stepped onto the stage of Google I/O as the head of VR and VP. Speaking a bit tongue-tied and very quickly, Bavor introduced the details of the Daydream VR platform to the world.

2016 was another "year of VR," with Oculus, acquired by Facebook for $2 billion, still operating independently and having just opened pre-orders for its first consumer product, the Oculus Rift CV1, earlier that year. The industry was very interested in whether this "desktop-level" product could surpass the HTC Vive, launched in collaboration with Valve.

From that perspective, if VR truly became the next generation of computing platforms, most people would likely have thought Google would be the winner, not the later leader Facebook, because Google had a strong hand in the VR direction.

Two years before Daydream VR was unveiled, Google had already introduced the allure of VR with a cardboard and plastic lens headset called Cardboard. True to Google's style, the team open-sourced the Cardboard solution, allowing anyone to download and create their own cardboard headset. Some estimates suggest that this cardboard headset sold at least 100 million units globally, making it the "first experience" of VR for most people in the world.

At the same time, as the owner of the Android system, Google could optimize Daydream VR at the system level. To better optimize mobile VR effects, Oculus's CTO and legendary programmer John Carmack often traveled to South Korea to refine the experience of Samsung's mobile VR product, Gear VR, with the Samsung team.

Externally, brands like Xiaomi and Lenovo became the first batch of partners, with the latter producing phones that supported the Daydream VR platform.

In terms of content, Google's YouTube continued its platform advantage, becoming the world's largest 360-degree video platform; Spotlight Stories, which once invested millions in producing VR videos, gathered a group of well-known Hollywood directors and artists to explore the frontier of VR imagery.

In the browser space, Chrome held over 90% market share, so Google also tried to promote the WebVR standard and experience. If successful, this would mean that VR experiences could be viewed and shared like videos on web pages.

Of course, sometimes having a good hand of cards is not the deciding factor for winning.

The Daydream VR headset looked high-quality, and compared to the heavy plastic feel of early Oculus and HTC Vive products, the fabric material felt better, similar to the t-shirts programmers often wear, making it inviting to touch and engage with. Although the team did well on the details of this product, it couldn't change the fact that it was still an upgraded version of a VR headset box. The experience was certainly much better than Cardboard, but it still couldn't compare to the Gear VR, which was developed in collaboration with Samsung, achieving the peak of mobile VR experience at that time through high-end Samsung phones and more solid optimization.

Screenshot of the Daydream VR platform

In terms of ecosystem, even though companies like Xiaomi and Lenovo expressed support early on, Samsung and Huawei, which had their own VR ambitions, were more ambiguous and did not immediately announce support for flagship phones with Daydream VR.

In the content ecosystem, Google made numerous efforts in the VR video field, providing creators with substantial help in hardware, software, and algorithms. Unfortunately, the "three degrees of freedom" content of 360-degree videos, which did not allow viewers to move freely, could impress early users but could not keep them engaged for continuous consumption.

In fact, this is a common issue with mobile headset VR products: they can quickly attract users but cannot retain them. By early 2016, Cardboard app downloads exceeded 25 million, but daily active users hovered below 0.05%. The same awkwardness occurred on the Daydream platform, where VR app downloads lingered between 1,000 and 5,000 times six months after its debut, raising doubts about the sales of Daydream VR hardware.

Mobile headsets could not save VR; standalone devices are the future. At the 2017 Google Developer Conference, Bavor revealed that Google was collaborating with Qualcomm to develop standalone VR devices. At that time, Oculus was promoting its desktop product, the Oculus Rift CV1, while secretly collaborating with Xiaomi on the later three degrees of freedom standalone VR device, Oculus Go. Ultimately, Oculus Go was launched in both the U.S. and China, while only Lenovo produced the later obscure Mirage VR standalone device for Google.

Despite the advantages of a system ecosystem, Google did not invest heavily and relied on partners, which ultimately led to Google VR missing the opportunity for standalone devices after losing its mobile VR advantage, and the "daydream" was shattered.

Unfortunate Timing for Google Glass

If Daydream VR was Google's unwillingness to go all in, then the defeat of Google Glass, as a pioneer in AR, was stifled by Google's long-standing tradition of "don't be evil."

Two years before Google's joking cardboard VR headset, at the 2012 developer conference, Google unveiled Google Glass, a forward-thinking product. Looking back now, this monocular prism AR headset seems commonplace, but nine years ago, it was quite stunning.

With bone conduction, a single-sided touchpad, and voice control, Google Glass almost set the template for AR headset design and interaction, until Microsoft launched HoloLens in 2015, which brought new breakthroughs in design. In 2012, Time magazine named Google Glass one of the best inventions of the year.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin was the best spokesperson for Google Glass, appearing at charity events wearing a prototype of the glasses as early as the beginning of 2012. Brin frequently made appearances, diligently promoting Google Glass.

The design was eye-catching, but Google Glass had limited functionality. When connected to a phone, the 640×360 pixel prism could display simple text prompts and map information, listen to music using bone conduction technology, and take photos and videos with the front camera.

However, the $1,500 price tag of Google Glass meant it could only gain popularity among geeks and developers, making it difficult to reach ordinary consumers. At least ordinary people did not wait for Google Glass to reach the consumer market; it was retired early.

The issue arose from the front camera of Google Glass.

Due to design reasons, the front camera of Google Glass did not have any special effect prompts when taking photos or recording videos, leading people to wonder, "Is this person filming me?" This was a major taboo for privacy-conscious individuals in Europe and the U.S.

Front camera of Google Glass | Image from Google

Some geeks' distorted love for Google Glass also fueled the backlash. The photo of tech blogger Robert Scoble wearing Google Glass while showering left many with psychological scars. As a result, users of Google Glass were given a new name—"Glass Hole," and many restaurants even stated they would not serve customers wearing Google Glass.

Years later, Snapchat and Facebook launched toy-like smart glasses that had far fewer functions than Google Glass but could still take photos and videos. However, they featured a ring of LED lights around the camera to indicate when someone was taking a photo, which made the experience feel much better. Moreover, after years of exposure, people had become familiar with the concepts and products of VR headsets and AR glasses, making them less sensitive than at the beginning.

Just over a year after its launch, Google discontinued Google Glass.

Although it faced setbacks in the consumer market, Google Glass embarked on a new journey in the B2B sector, finding new opportunities in many large manufacturing companies. However, it had completely faded from public view and could not be compared to Microsoft's HoloLens, which secured a $20 billion contract with the U.S. military.

Innovation and Determination

Even now, more than twenty years after its establishment, Google remains a powerful force in Silicon Valley, continuously supplying talent in AI, autonomous driving, and other fields. However, few of the projects from the Google X lab's "moonshot projects" have succeeded and persisted.

This can be seen as Google's own "innovator's dilemma." On one hand, relying on nearly monopolistic search advertising revenue allows Google to explore various directions; on the other hand, the innovative ideas in the minds of the geeks in Mountain View can quickly be productized, but when it comes to strategic investments, they struggle to secure resources.

Thus, we can see that netizens have created an "online graveyard" for Google, to "commemorate" the hundreds of applications that surfaced at developer conferences, garnered hundreds of thousands to millions of users, and were ultimately cut down. Daydream VR is one of them.

In contrast, Facebook, almost everyone knows that the $2 billion (the exact figure is $3 billion, not counting the several hundred million dollar lawsuit with Zenimax) acquisition of Oculus was undoubtedly a mistake, but that did not stop Mark Zuckerberg from absorbing Oculus into Facebook and continuing to invest heavily, even going so far as to rename the company Meta to announce its vision for VR and AR.

In a sense, Google's innovation lost to Facebook's determination.

Although Google Labs has been reorganized, and Clay Bavor, who previously led the VR department, has regained control of the lab's power, Google VR and AR are just part of it. Project Starline (holographic video calls) and the Area 120 internal incubator make up the project hierarchy of the lab.

Sundar Pichai stated in an interview, "I feel fortunate that our mission is eternal. Now more than ever, organizing information is needed."

As the world goes crazy for the metaverse, Google's CEO still believes that the company's growth point comes from search business, not VR or AR.