Google acquires North, Focals smart glasses start up
It has been confirmed the acquisition of the small Canadian start up North by Google, news that confirms the attention paid by the Mountain View giant to smart glasses. North had appeared on the market in 2018 with the launch of Focals, smart glasses already set up to communicate with the voice assistant Amazon Alexa, able to superimpose information on the user’s field of vision so that he can consult without distractions the notifications coming from the phone, the directions of the road navigation, the commands for the multimedia content and so on. Thanks to this, Google is definitely moving towards the smart glasses sector, where it has already been investing for years, just remember the Google Glass, now in its second generation.
Smart glasses, is this the time? For SPAI, yes
Smart glasses, actually, have been around for a few years already. They had to replace smartphones but perhaps, as often happens, it was too early and both we and technology were not yet ready. Today, however, with this news, we have the confirmation that this is the direction we are going in, and we at SPAI had understood it, at least as far as our professional field is concerned.
“A few years ago we launched our Help4Tech service – explains Fabio Farneti, CEO Spai -, a remote maintenance service through smart glasses that connects end customers (those who bought the automatic machine) with the technicians of the parent company (our customers). In addition to the connection through smart glasses, we provide technical support for the software, a professional who acts as a control room and translation between the technician and the end customer. A service that, as it happened for Google smart glasses, had a slow start, certainly undermined by technological prejudices (I want to put my hands on my machine) and old habits difficult to break (international travel). Then the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. Today, sending a traveler abroad has risks and costs that companies cannot bear, and so our service is rapidly taking off, not only for maintenance, but also for installation and validation processes“.
Google news in the field of smart glasses may be of interest to SPAI?
“Undoubtedly, yes. At the moment we are not tied to any particular manufacturer, our system works independently of the smart glasses model. Anyway, we are testing different models to see which have the best functionalities for our needs, so we can recommend them to our customers or, in case, provide them with the Help4Tech service. We will talk about them soon”.
