Google Acquires North

Google has acquired North, the nine-year-old Canadian smartglass maker confirmed yesterday.

In total, North had raised nearly $200 million from investors. But as longtime readers know, hardware is hard, and as Google knows, making AR glasses a thing is even harder. North discontinued production of Focals 1.0 in December and laid off part of its staff in February, The Verge reported. And the company said it’s nixing development of Focals 2.0, the next-gen AR eyewear it was working on.

What’s Google’s plan?

While the company does sell Google Glass to enterprise customers, I wouldn’t expect a consumer reboot soon. Google says it plans to pair North’s technology with its vision of ambient computing, technology that works in the background.

Bottom line: Google has ARCore, its AR software development kit, and AR integrations in search (Lens) and navigation (Maps). Whether the company pushes into AR hardware is TBD, but we do know its buddies Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook are all trying...