Back in June 2020, Patently Apple posted a report titled "Alphabet has Reportedly Acquired Canadian AR Smartglasses Company called 'North' which gives us a Peek at their Future" - AR Glasses Project. Then during a Samsung Unpacked Event  in February 2023 Samsung, Google and Qualcomm representatives announced a new Extended Reality (XR) ecosystem alliance.

Roh Tae-moon, president of Samsung Electronics' Mobile eXperience Business stated at the time: "We will transform the future of the mobile industry by building the XR ecosystem together with Qualcomm and Google." Rumors suggested that Qualcomm will make the chips, Google will introduce an Android-based operating system for eyewear and Samsung will initially focus on the hardware side of things.  

To encourage Android OEMs to support this effort, Google has reportedly shut down their AR Glass project known as "Iris," according to Business Insider who went on to state that Google's head of VR/AR projects Clay Bavor left the company four months ago and confirmed on his LinkedIn Profile page. Bavor was with Google for 18 years and is now Co-Founder of "New Company," with no hint as to what the company will be doing.

Business Insider noted that "Google is now focused on software instead of hardware. It’s building a “micro XR” platform it could license to other headset manufacturers, much like how Google provides Android to a broad ecosystem of phones.

The report further noted that Mark Lucovsky is still on Google's AR team as "Senior Director of Engineering, Operating Systems, AR," according to LinkedIn. He only joined Google 19 months ago. He was previously the General Manager of Operating Systems at Oculus VR.

Now that Apple has introduced their Vision Pro Spatial Computing headset, the Alliance will have to burn the midnight oil in order to counter Apple's move into this space. In that light, Google dropping their hardware-based Project Iris makes sense. Getting ahead of Apple is now the priority and a unified platform and ecosystem will encourage Android developers to get onboard at a faster pace once it's introduced in 2024. Advanced headsets will likely use Qualcomm's next-gen Oryon processor that's due to arrive in 2024.