Google Searches for Its Footing in Smart Glasses as Meta Gains Ground

Earlier this year, Google staffers began pitching their counterparts at Samsung—a longtime Google hardware partner—on an idea for a new collaboration between the companies: high-tech glasses.

At the time, another big tech company, Meta Platforms, was starting to see success from its own Ray-Ban smart glasses, which allowed people to record video and listen to music. The artificial intelligence boom had sparked even more excitement about the category, with Meta and others seeing smart glasses as a natural fit for the technology. Google wanted in.

First, though, the Google staffers had to get Samsung on board, along with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and other higher-ups from the search giant. The staffers created a video that showed how people wearing Google smart glasses could access the company’s AI agent on them, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Google and Samsung ultimately greenlit the effort, another person with knowledge said.