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Google Acquires North

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Re: Google Acquires North

#181

Post by jwilliamson »

macNchz wrote: post #101
peeters wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure "promising startup" describes North (previously Thalmic Labs) that well. Everything I've heard around the Waterloo tech scene is that it was mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government. Tales from past employees are not flattering. Being bought by Google is likely the best thing that could happen to both the founders…

I lived across the street from their Brooklyn store from when it opened in 2018 to when it closed last winter (in anticipation of "relaunching" for the new glasses they were planning this year). They rented an expensive glassy corner storefront ($50k/month I heard at the time) and built it out to a very high standard, but there was never anyone inside shopping. The store employees just stood around looking at their p…

There was an article in the Globe and Mail a few days ago saying each store was averaging about 10 sales/week, which certainly meshes with the store always being empty.

Re: Google Acquires North

#182

Post by jaakl »

kps wrote: post #156
gcbw3 wrote: post #121

Not acquihire. Employees are not moving to alphabet. North was a scam, and was about to be bought by patent trolls. This was a legal move by alphabet. They pretty much paid ransom to the North (Thalmic labs) founders to not be harassed by trolls later on. I guess it at least shows that google haven't abandoned google-glass entirely (or their legal dept doesn't know they aren't in the glass business any more, i wouldn…

> Not acquihire. Employees are not moving to alphabet. Do you have inside information? The announcement implies acquihire. You don't explicitly say where people will be working for you if they're not going to be working for you. > They'll join the Google team based in Kitchener-Waterloo, Canada—North’s hometown and an area with impressive tech talent. We're excited to welcome our new colleagues, and committed to the…

That’s the public message. Their HR will probably cherry pick some, sometimes even such scammers happen to have not yet corrupt talent. Other than that the IP situation would be the only sensible explanation of this deal.

Re: Google Acquires North

#183

Post by paulpan »

gffrd wrote: post #158
michaelmior wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got an invitation today to purchase Echo Frames[0], Amazon's smart glasses. I'm a little on the fence but early reviews seem pretty promising. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Staging-Product-Not-Retail-Sale/dp/B0...

I'm curious: what's the use case you're interested in these for? And what makes these more appealing than, say, earbuds that offer the same functionality?

I'm wondering too...it's just earbuds in a different form factor right? I guess it's one less device to carry but would be concerned about the weight and battery life.

The appeal of Hololens and rumored Apple Glass is that they offer augmented reality capacity. Aka layering useful information onto an existing field of view. Google Glass back in the day also offered that - perhaps ahead of its time given the technology constraints at the time.

Re: Google Acquires North

#184

Post by bhandziuk »

verdverm wrote: post #139
Kiro wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want AR glasses. I want glasses that look like regular glasses but can display stuff, similar to a smart watch.

You don't want to interact with those things using your hands or frisbee a photo to a friend, bouncing it off of a wall? (Physics applied to a UI system aware of surroundings is so much fun!)

If it's anything like using a phone it's going to be a huge pain the rear to interact with others in any meaningful way. Just sharing a link is by far the easiest way to share anything with anyone. I don't want some fancy NFC, proximity sensing, bluetooth activating mumbo jumbo.

It might be cool but it's not useful.

Re: Google Acquires North

#185

Post by paulpan »

subsubzero wrote: post #174

I think the biggest problem with smart glasses, (AR tech) is the battery/power system. A family member worked at a defunct AR eyeglass maker and mentioned that point. Magic leap is in that space also and their solution was a huge battery pack(hip mounted) with a chord attaching to the glasses. His company had the power supply near the ear(it was smaller but didn't have enough juice to last hours). These examples(nort…

Good point on the battery life. One mitigation would be allowing quick (wireless?) charging from existing devices like smartphones, but there would still need to be a minimally viable battery life. Example is the first Apple Watch that targeted a day's worth.

I imagine system performance would be another early issue. Again in the example of first Apple Watch, it was nothing more than a display to render the paired iPhone's content. It wasn't until the 3rd generation that it became more standalone and able to function without a "co-device".

Come to think of it in the case of the rumored Apple Glass, its rollout/development might be similar to that of the Watch. First couple of generations are heavily, if not entirely, dependent on the iPhone for data processing. But eventually it'll come into its own - thanks to the strength of Apple's custom silicon development.

Re: Google Acquires North

#186

Post by kentt »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #126
ornornor wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government This describes a surprisingly high number of companies I’ve worked at in Canada. These SRED credits keep afloat so many companies that should have otherwise perished and that won’t ever go anywhere. You can even hire SRED consultants that will help you milk those credits as much as pos…

When I worked in a startup, just feeding the SRED consultant with info ended up eating hours and hours of time. The intent of the credit is for real foundational engineering research but the reality seems to be is that it ends up getting eaten by companies that are just applying existing tech in mostly non-novel ways, and consultants get to try to spin it otherwise. It needs to be replaced.

Yes. Each company I worked for has spent many man hours and consulting wages on SRED. The claims were 100% BS.

Re: Google Acquires North

#187

Post by ejz »

In addition to everything below, a great way to expand their Canadian presence to get around problems with American immigration laws.

Re: Google Acquires North

#188

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

deelowe wrote: post #157
numpad0 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And aren’t those “smart earbuds” just Bluetooth headsets?

Alexa requires specialized hardware for the voice recognition.

How is what it requires different from the microphone in a typical headset?

Re: Google Acquires North

#189

Post by blahbhthrow3748 »

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #167
8ytecoder wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal experience strongly says so as well. Been a very employee at two different companies - at least one made an “exit” - only the founder made any money at all. I took a deep pay cut for two years.

The startups my dev colleagues worked in Toronto, the ones that got acquired none got any equity. I think it’s common in Toronto for employees at startups to not get equity. Ive also read canadian founders often sell below their companies worth

That's not correct, it sounds like they got rolled.
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