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Google Glass is adding Meet so remote supervisors can see through field workers’ eyes

Google Glass is adding Meet so remote supervisors can see through field workers’ eyes

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Much like Microsoft’s HoloLens

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Image: Google

You probably haven’t thought about Google Glass in a while, but the Enterprise Edition of its heads-up display is getting a neat new trick: it’ll be able to use Google Meet (formerly Hangouts Meet) to let remote supervisors see through the eyes of their workers in the field and help them complete tasks with live chat.

It’s an idea Microsoft has been pursuing since the very first HoloLens demos, where it walked us through the process of fixing a light switch via a Skype video call. But Microsoft has since discontinued its Skype for HoloLens app. Instead, it charges between $20 and $65 per user per month for access to its newer Dynamics 365 Remote Assist program. (See the video below.)

In its official blog post, Google says the new Meet functionality is only for paying Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) customers, and even they will need to apply for the beta as of now, despite the fact that Google opened up direct sales of the Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2 in February. I suppose you could just point your phone with Google Meet at your work, but then you wouldn’t be hands-free.

An illustration of what Google Meet should look like in Glass, showing a small semi-transparent image of a video chat overlayed atop a picture of the inside of a data center.
An illustration of what Google Meet should look like. Google says it dogfooded the app in its own data centers.
Image: Google

Both Microsoft and Google already have a variety of enterprise customers for their headsets. One notable early win for Google was Boeing, which used it to help build airplanes by augmenting the PDF assembly guides they had to view on laptop screens.

Google has been pushing Meet a lot since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which makes sense given the rise of rival teleconferencing platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. The company recently shoehorned the video chat platform into Gmail, rolled out its own Meet conference room hardware bundles, and added group calls to its Nest smart displays.