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Smart glasses in development as real-life Google Goggles

Google is reportedly working on a pair of augmented reality glasses that'll superimpose information on the real world.

Joe Svetlik Reporter
Joe has been writing about consumer tech for nearly seven years now, but his liking for all things shiny goes back to the Gameboy he received aged eight (and that he still plays on at family gatherings, much to the annoyance of his parents). His pride and joy is an Infocus projector, whose 80-inch picture elevates movie nights to a whole new level.
Joe Svetlik
2 min read

Not content with cataloguing the world's information, Google, it seems, is now branching out into eyewear. But not just any eyewear.

The search behemoth is reportedly working on a pair of glasses that'll use augmented reality to superimpose information on the real world, just like the Google Goggles app -- or Terminator vision. Now that's the future.

The glasses are in development in the company's top secret 'Google X' lab, along with a bunch of other wacky products. (We're imagining Q's lab in the James Bond films, with marginally fewer flamethrowers.) They're in the late prototype stages and resemble a normal pair of thick-rimmed specs, according to 9to5Google, quoting an unnamed source at the company.

There are a few buttons on the glasses though, which you won't find on face furniture from your local Specsavers. They're likely to use a transparent LCD or AMOLED display. The glasses are apparently an 'open secret' at Google, which recently employed a wearable computing specialist from MIT, Richard DuVal, whose PhD was called 'The Memory Glasses'.

It seems a good bet they'll run Android, and we're going to go out on a limb and speculate that they'll use Google's upcoming voice-recognition tech Majel to let you search while looking at things. Now this really is starting to sound like the future.

The Google X lab is for the company's more experimental projects. Google lets employees spend 20 per cent of their time on their own projects, some of which eventually become Google products and services. The firm has its own fleet of similarly sci-fi self-driving cars that it's also looking to put into production and sell to the public.

It's been a busy week at the Googleplex, with the company funding science exhibitions, putting its doodles on t-shirts, and making it a white Christmas.

Would you buy a pair of Google glasses? Or a driverless car? Let us know on Facebook, or leave your thoughts in the comments below.