Google Tests its Reality Glasses

Google has finally begun testing its highly anticipated, futuristic technology – augmented-reality enabled glasses – which would enable users to view information on a display which sits above the eye.

Google’s glasses would be wirelessly connected to the Internet, powered by Android and enable the user to interact using voice commands and eye gestures by tracking eye movements. It would also offer a camera to record video and capture images as well as provide an overlay of data to augment the user’s view with additional information. While this might sound like the engineers might have watched Mission Impossible one too many times, it may not be as far-fetched as you think.

Not many details about “Project Glass” are available yet, but it could potentially be the default way in which users interact digitally with the physical world around them in the coming years. Google faces competition primarily from Apple and Microsoft in this space.

While most of the functionality in the initial prototypes would be powered by smart phones paired with the glasses, they could eventually become more advanced and even evolve into a contact lens with embedded electronics which can display images directly to a user’s eye.

Now this all may seem like a gimmicky, sci-fi experiment right now, but it could become the next revolutionary consumer electronics device after smart phones, which were a novelty just 10 years ago and now ubiquitous and just a few years ago people said tablets were a waste of time, as Forbes stated.

Google could offer advanced search capabilities through the use of augmented reality on Google Glasses and monetize it using advertising which it does best.

Glasses are not expected to impact Google’s revenues in any significant manner in the next couple of years, but in the next decade this may happen.

To be mentioned that advertising on mobile, a relatively new medium now accounts for over a third of Google’s overall value by our estimates. As such, more ways to capture the mobile ad opportunity could provide a revenue driver down the road.