
Google killed a small smart glass maker after acquiring it - vvpvijay
https://androidrookies.com/here-is-how-google-killed-a-small-smart-glass-maker-after-acquiring-it/
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carlosdp
What? This article makes absolutely no sense.

How is buying a company that clearly was not doing well financially
(acquisition price at $150m, ~$200m raised with the last $40m being a debt
financing, so it is a bail out), in what is clearly messaged as an acqui-hire
for talent, in any way comparable to Amazon using its investment arm to
acquire confidential information and replicate company products?

Respectfully, the author doesn't seem to understand what's actually going on
here, this seems like a standard acqui-hire for future work on a smart glass
product within Google. I highly doubt North didn't know they were going to be
discontinuing the Focus before the acquisition closed.

What would have actually been unethical is waiting for North to run out of
money and then try to hire their people at lower salaries or something.

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JumpCrisscross
> _What would have actually been unethical is waiting for North to run out of
> money and then try to hire their people at lower salaries_

Why? It would have been riskier. With aqui-hire they get everyone and someone
else could scoop them. But at the end of the day the North team failed to make
a product that sold.

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carlosdp
I didn't say it would be a good business decision =P

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radres
In the article it says this move by Google is worse than Amazon investing in
businesses and stealing info. How is this worse? Google bought the whole
company, didn't make partial investment. They can do whatever they want with
the company.

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MereInterest
"Worse" doesn't just mean "worse for the companies involved", it can also mean
"worse for society". The net result of Google continually buying startups and
shutting down the projects is that fewer products receive long-term support,
receive any iterative improvements, or can be relied upon to exist later.

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Axsuul
It's still too early to say and we don't have enough visibility. Pairing
North's tech with Google's distribution would expand the reach and potential
of this type of product. North could've been running out of money before the
acquisition so Google swooping in ensured the tech lived on. These are all
plausible outcomes that would end up being "better for society"

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sulam
These stories about competition being thwarted often seem to ignore the
elephant in the room — the companies being acquired weren’t doing well. I’m
sure the North team feels like they took the best option they had
realistically available to them. We can speculate about what might have been,
but unless most scenarios involve them going out of business and everyone
looking for new jobs, it’s not very accurate. You could say most startups take
the chance despite low chance of success, but North has done that and ended up
on the wrong side of that distribution once already, and any further attempt
would be saddled with the existing debt and cap table. This is a clean slate
for them.

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binbag
This article seems to completely miss the point. Google paid the founders a
lot of money to acquire their IP and know how which they will integrate into
Glass. Why would google run two identical products? Nonsense article.

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stingrae
founders probably made nothing actually. Investors and Debt have priority and
they got bought for less than was raised. I definitely still agree the article
is garbage.

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Confiks
Would anyone have _any_ direction on what kind of projectors North was using
for this product? I have no idea where to start searching.

In the same way, I would also be very interested in any further info on
Ellsworth's Tilt Five projectors, bottom right-right of [1] (full text of
interview [2]). Interesting video with info on the (retroreflective) optics
system here [3].

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200722042213im_/https://i0.wp....](https://web.archive.org/web/20200722042213im_/https://i0.wp.com/skarredghost.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/09/Tilt_Five_manufacturing.jpg?w=680&ssl=1) presumably
shows three generations of the product. From left to right board, camera and
projector.

[2] [https://skarredghost.com/2019/09/24/interview-jeri-
ellsworth...](https://skarredghost.com/2019/09/24/interview-jeri-ellsworth-
tilt-five-ar-kickstarter/)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB4NjMWKV0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB4NjMWKV0s)

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davidu
This is a bizarre article. North was unsuccessful in the market and basically
ran out of money and time. Google picked up the people and IP and those
efforts are now being directed elsewhere within Google. The idea that Google
killed off a competitor is not accurate, as North had already failed to
succeed. It was a good effort, and like most consumer hardware attempts,
brutally hard.

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mdcatlin
The article doesn't say anything about the internal (to Google) disposition of
the team or thechnology -- only that the previous public product roadmap is
cancelled. I'm unimpressed.

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danvoell
Would it be worse if they didn’t acquire it, but crushed it in the market?
Obviously we won’t know.

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arkitaip
Google can't crush shit when it comes to hardware.

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qzx_pierri
Software either (outside of vanilla Android) - They can't make a consistent
"ecosystem" to save their lives.

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luxuryballs
this seems normal, why would Google continue to market a product rather than
integrate the tech into their own branded product, I know Waze is still Waze
but I think that's far different for obvious reasons

