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Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

techcrunch.com

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Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#31

Post by gt_ »

Stratoscope wrote: post #21
bwang29 wrote: post #6

Lytro has really cool technology but never really found a good use case for consumers. I owned both the 1st generation and 2nd generation camera, as much as I hated the UI of the software and usability of the hardware, I can clearly see the team has tried really hard to make it usable. They tried building an editing app, a community, a community 2.0, multiple hardware batch revisions. I wonder why they didn’t stop so…

I discovered Lytro at the Maker Faire when they had their "borrow a Lytro" demo. It was a great bit of marketing: take a Lytro around the Faire for an hour (where are there are always plenty of interesting subjects) and afterward they put all your shots in an online gallery for you. I got a fun shot or two that day and promptly bought one of their first cameras. But it wasn't a very good camera, and they completely m…

There is a lot of interesting stuff in your review. As a more classic photographer myself, I had some different criticisms but also found the thing about letting others click interact with the focus offputting.

The tech was really interesting to photographers and I absolutely think it could be adopted if built into a reasonable camera design. It’s very normal for photographers to carry many cameras and I knew people to carry Lyros some but I think some of it was that the company had two different users if was designing for, which isn’t usually a problem with cameras but this was so different and novelty that it mattered. I really think if they just made super nerdy products without trying to satisfy the cell phone crowd, they could have built a niche following in photographers.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#32

Post by fwgwgwgch »

vadimberman wrote: post #12
nigelcleland wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article, the sale price is estimated at $40 million, whilst the company had raised $200 million, most recently at a $360 million valuation. Most likely not a good pay day, definitely a significant haircut for some of the investors to say the least.

Agree, and given the standard "liquidity preference", the founders are likely to net $0, except for the Google bonuses for the engineering (Jack Barker-like Rosenthal is not likely to stick there). It's sad, really. It's one of the really innovative companies, but it's not easy to sell tech ahead of its time. Yet another incident that will encourage to pick copycats over real innovation. I guess Google is no longer a…

Can you explain what you mean by "liquidity prrference"? My understanding is that you get money in proportion to your vested share at the time of sale

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#33

Post by vadimberman »

dpandya wrote: post #16
vadimberman wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, and given the standard "liquidity preference", the founders are likely to net $0, except for the Google bonuses for the engineering (Jack Barker-like Rosenthal is not likely to stick there). It's sad, really. It's one of the really innovative companies, but it's not easy to sell tech ahead of its time. Yet another incident that will encourage to pick copycats over real innovation. I guess Google is no longer a…

> It's sad, really. It's one of the really innovative companies, but it's not easy to sell tech ahead of its time. This glorifies failure quite a bit. One major objective of tech companies is to produce products that customers value and like. Lytro failed to do this. Just because the underlying science is complicated doesn't make the tech "ahead of its time" due to the fact that maybe the tech, as implemented, just i…

> Having complicated science underlying a product certainly doesn't excuse a company from producing products that people want.

That's not the biggest obstacle, actually. The biggest obstacle that the sales strategy has no case studies to work with.

What market does the new tech appeal to? Should it be B2C or B2B? (In their case, they tried both IIRC.)

You may hold the collective entity responsible, if you wish, but in this case, they required both sharp and inventive techies (which they had), and a business leader with a vision (which they didn't have). It's not easy to put together, especially if the investors make the call for the CEO's replacement.

An analogy from a different area, Siri could be another dead curio if Steve Jobs didn't decide to make it a centerpiece of their new iPhone.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#34

Post by fuck_google »

bwang29 wrote: post #6

Lytro has really cool technology but never really found a good use case for consumers. I owned both the 1st generation and 2nd generation camera, as much as I hated the UI of the software and usability of the hardware, I can clearly see the team has tried really hard to make it usable. They tried building an editing app, a community, a community 2.0, multiple hardware batch revisions. I wonder why they didn’t stop so…

Isn't that just like the Apple/Google way of telling the users what is right, because the users are not smart like the geniuses they have hired? :)

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#35

Post by jacobolus »

Stratoscope wrote: post #21
bwang29 wrote: post #6

Lytro has really cool technology but never really found a good use case for consumers. I owned both the 1st generation and 2nd generation camera, as much as I hated the UI of the software and usability of the hardware, I can clearly see the team has tried really hard to make it usable. They tried building an editing app, a community, a community 2.0, multiple hardware batch revisions. I wonder why they didn’t stop so…

I discovered Lytro at the Maker Faire when they had their "borrow a Lytro" demo. It was a great bit of marketing: take a Lytro around the Faire for an hour (where are there are always plenty of interesting subjects) and afterward they put all your shots in an online gallery for you. I got a fun shot or two that day and promptly bought one of their first cameras. But it wasn't a very good camera, and they completely m…

I think there’s a different (and to me more interesting) potential, which is to expose the layering to allow creative effects in post. For example you could realistically stick fog into any picture (or remove some amount of fog/haze from pictures that had it to begin with), turn the background monochromatic, add motion blur selectively at particular depths, create focus blur with any bokeh you want, take multiple pictures with the same person in different places and composite them together, etc. etc.

With careful and laborious use of Photoshop it’s possible to do most anything today, but with a light-field image there are a lot of creative controls that could be made easier, faster, and more reliable. (Of course, doing this properly would take hiring some signal processing gurus, color scientists, professional photo retouchers, and interface designers, and spending years on semi-open-ended research.)

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#36

Post by modeless »

cmac2992 wrote: post #3

Awesome. After playing with Google's go pro light field images, it's really hard to go back and enjoy regular 360 photos. The quality and 6dof sense of presence. was amazing. Hopefully the addition of lytros tech makes it even better.

These are the mentioned light field images: https://www.blog.google/products/google-vr/experimenting-lig...

They can only be experienced properly with a positionally tracked VR headset, but they are extremely cool if you have one.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#37

Post by randomerr »

samstave wrote: post #10
bwang29 wrote: post #6

Lytro has really cool technology but never really found a good use case for consumers. I owned both the 1st generation and 2nd generation camera, as much as I hated the UI of the software and usability of the hardware, I can clearly see the team has tried really hard to make it usable. They tried building an editing app, a community, a community 2.0, multiple hardware batch revisions. I wonder why they didn’t stop so…

They are buying them to make dash cams for self driving cars is my guess... That tech in dash-cam video is priceless

I think its more that what the tech is for the Pixel 2 Super XL edition or Pixel 3. That would let you build a 3d photo and post it to Google Photos. Or maybe they could partner up with a 3D printing company the way you can print photo albums.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#38

Post by Qworg »

taneq wrote: post #30
ipsum2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already exists: http://lightfield-forum.com/light-field-camera-prototypes/nv... (among others)

Wow, that looks awesome! For something at the demonstration-prototype stage in 2013 I'd have hoped they would have something at least in development by now.

They have a fully working version of it: https://vr.lytro.com/within/hallelujah

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#39

Post by ansible »

jacobush wrote: post #25
akhatri_aus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely for VR, the 'reverse' of the Lytro allows projection to the eye at multiple focal points.

I don't know about "likely", but that is an awesome idea.

My top candidate for AR in the longer term is a scanning pico-watt laser which projects the image directly onto your retina.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#40

Post by nitrogen »

fwgwgwgch wrote: post #32
vadimberman wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, and given the standard "liquidity preference", the founders are likely to net $0, except for the Google bonuses for the engineering (Jack Barker-like Rosenthal is not likely to stick there). It's sad, really. It's one of the really innovative companies, but it's not easy to sell tech ahead of its time. Yet another incident that will encourage to pick copycats over real innovation. I guess Google is no longer a…

Can you explain what you mean by "liquidity prrference"? My understanding is that you get money in proportion to your vested share at the time of sale

Search for "liquidation preference" on your favorite search engine
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