Google and Magic Leap Forge Partnership for Next-Gen Metaverse Experience

cryptonews.com:

Magic Leap has announced a technology partnership with Google to develop new extended reality (XR) technologies.

The collaboration brings together Magic Leap’s expertise in optics with Google’s infrastructure, potentially signaling increased competition for Apple and Meta in the metaverse hardware and experiences space, the company said in an announcement.

While Google recently downsized its augmented and extended reality teams, and Magic Leap faced setbacks with one of its major projects, this partnership could have positive implications for the metaverse as a whole.

The collaboration aims to advance immersive experiences for developers and customers, blending the physical world with valuable and contextually relevant XR solutions.

“This partnership accelerates the transformative power of AR by combining our extensive optics capabilities with Google’s technologies to continue to advance immersive experiences to the developer ecosystem and for customers,” Magic Leap CTO Julie Larson-Green said.

“We are looking forward to expanding the potential of XR – blending the physical world with valuable, contextually relevant solutions.”

Although the press release did not detail any specific products or services resulting from the partnership, it raises speculation about the development of a new AR/XR headset that could challenge the market dominance of Meta and Apple.

However, the exact benefits for Google in this partnership remain unclear.

While Google has a track record of creating bespoke hardware across various product categories, its previous AR/XR efforts, such as Google Glass, have not met with significant success.

Tech journalist Sean Hollister suggests that Google may be interested in a patent or methodology held by Magic