Google Glass’s Explorer program came to an end early this year, with the team moving under Nest’s Tony Fadell to re-invigorate the project and transition it towards a retail product. Now the Wall Street Journal has reported that the team has now been renamed and there are a few new additions to the team.
The team is now known as Project Aura in Google, and is still run by business executive and jewelry designer Ivy Ross who came to Google via companies such as Mattel, the Gap and Disney. The team is being overseen by Tony Fadell with an eye to making a saleable product in the long term, though short term we’re hearing there’s updated devices being shipped to Glass for Work partners.
The newly named Project Aura team is getting a boost with fresh talent however with a new hire from Amazons development project called ‘Lab126’ being brought on board. The new addition is Dmitry Svetlov, a software development manager who has described Project Aura on his LinkedIn profile as “Glass & Beyond”, also advising that the team is “building cool wearables.”
Svetlov was not the only new hire from Lab126 however with the report stating that several new hires were made from the lab in the wake of the cancellation of Amazon’s Fire phone.
While both Mr Svetlov and Tony Fadell both declined to comment, there’s little doubt that there’s movemnt on Glass and with fresh talent comes new ideas and hopefully a more publicly acceptable product. We’re fans of Glass here and would love to see a more consumer friendly (and cheaper) version launched in the near future, though it does seem we’ll have at least a year or more to wait.
