Project Glass sounds like a super-villain’s secret weapon, so Google may need to give its wearable augmented reality device a friendlier name. Luckily the search giant owns the domain GoogleEye.com, so the high-tech monocle may be called Google Eye when it eventually starts selling to the public. Google has the URL locked down through registrar MarkMonitor, which it also uses to handle google.com and gmail.com.
Google registered the URL in June 2003, so it may have been dreaming about being mounted on your face for a long time.
The easy to read, spell, and pronounce name would help differentiate the augmented reality eyewear from standard glasses. As our URL tipster noted, the Google brand wouldn’t be overpowered by a short name like “Eye”. Google may have other URLs stashed and a different market name in mind, but this seems like a logical choice.
Yes, Project Glass is nothing but vaporware right now, but it gives us a hint at the future of mobile. It may be a year until a minimum viable product is ready for stores, and much longer until the product works as well as it does in the mind-blowing Project Glass mock-up video Google released yesterday. Still, the product has the potential to disrupt the smartphone market, and become a new portal to social media. That’s why companies like Apple and Facebook need to start scheming now in case eyewear computing becomes the norm.
Until computers beam information directly to our brains, we’ll have to look at some sort of screen. Google’s glasses could end up so awkward that no one will wear them. Still, they’re the next step on the way to augmented reality contact lenses. So whether it makes us look like we’re on Star Trek or it’s totally invisible, we could still be seeing the world through Google Eye.
Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...
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