Sources: Google wearable tech group Project Aura working on three prototypes, one with screen, and two without that rely on bone conduction like original Glass
Google Glass Successor Dumps Some Glass — So much for the screen. We've learned that Google's revamped Google Glass project …
Context & Ripple Effects
Project Aura is the second act of a story that began with the Glass Explorer Program shutting down and Glass moving under Tony Fadell as an independent division. The rebuild was deliberate: Google staffed Aura partly with engineers poached from Amazon's Lab126, then spent years circling back to head-worn displays — including an AR-capable standalone headset reported in mid-2016 — before shipping Glass Enterprise Edition 2 at $999 for the workplace.
Three parallel prototypes now show the team hedging on its core design question: whether the next device needs a screen at all. Two of the three drop the display entirely and lean on bone-conduction audio, the signature interaction of original Glass — a notable reversal given the later cancellation of the Iris AR glasses project, which pushed Google toward licensing AR software rather than building screen-first hardware.
First-order effects
- Google's own wearable roadmap splits three ways at once, so component sourcing, software priorities, and internal resources must be spread across both a display device and two audio-only variants rather than concentrated on one flagship.
Second-order effects
- Enterprise buyers who adopted Glass Enterprise Edition 2 at $999 face a forked upgrade path — they will have to guess whether Google's future standard-issue wearable keeps the display or goes screenless before committing to either ecosystem.
- Poaching talent from Amazon's Lab126 continues to shape the competitive field: the same hiring pipeline reported earlier means rival hardware teams are effectively training their successor's competitor.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — screen-first projects like Iris getting cut while screenless, audio-led designs survive — Google's wearables strategy structurally converges on lightweight, assistant-driven devices paired with licensed AR software for other manufacturers' headsets, rather than a single consumer smartglasses product.
The trend: Head-worn computing is splitting into two tracks — full-display AR headsets versus minimal, voice-first wearables — and Google is now explicitly testing both rather than betting on one.