You might have thought the Google Glass concept was as good as dead commercially, but oh no, Google might be about to get very spiffing altogether with a new Google Glass monocle concept.
The Google Glass was as good as dead last January after the company decided to stop offering it for sale on the commercial market.
Despite the fact that Google’s Eric Schmidt said that the augmented reality (AR) glasses were not dead, few really held out any hope that we would actually see them return to the average consumer, despite increased competition from Microsoft’s HoloLens.
Rumours of its return began back in July this year after it became apparent that Google was looking to hire a number to staff to work on a project that sounded awfully similar to Google Glass.
But it might come as a surprise that the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted a patent from Google for a new Google Glass design that looks an awful lot like a 21st-century monocle, according to TechCrunch.
The diagram of the Google Glass ‘monocle’
Describing how it would be worn, the patent says: “The band is adjustable such that it can be configured by a user to contact the head of the user at a first location near a temple, a second location along a portion of the user’s ear adjacent the temple, and at a third location along a rear position of the head of the user.”
Aside from the patent jargon that fills the application, there’s little else to see that would differ it too much from what the Google Glass had done before with information being displayed on the lens for the viewer to see.
It’s now just a matter of watching this space to see whether Google might try to resurrect the AR project. After all, it would be a very Google thing to stubbornly try and keep a project that has so far failed to achieve critical mass, like Google+ undergoing a major change this month.
Man with monocle image via Shutterstock
