“A wearable computing device includes a head-mounted display (HMD) that provides a field of view in which at least a portion of the environment of the wearable computing device is viewable. The HMD is operable to display images superimposed over the field of view.”
Sound boring? Don’t judge a book by its cover — or in this case, a patent by its introductory Abstract. These are the first two lines of a newly-published patent application that just appeared today, Pub. No. US 2013/0069985 A1. The owner? Google Inc. And the English translation of this patent-ese? A pair of glasses that function as a hands-free smartphone-like device, in which you can interact with everything from the internet to your TV set, refrigerator and garage door — all through natural language commands. And, we suspect, eventually by deliberate eye movements. Imagine . . . you can surf the news, Wikipedia, social networks and program your DVR while walking down the streets of midtown Manhattan. That is, of course, if you don’t mind looking like you’re talking to yourself while doing so. And that’s assuming you can master the art of walking while looking at the glass display two inches in front of you, instead of . . . say, the sidewalk. An actual device, called the Explorer Edition, just began a beta-testing stage this month, and the device is expected to be available by the end of 2013.
It is not often that newly published patent applications receive the attention that this one (along with its sister patents and applications) has. Even Apple, which recently confirmed rumors of a smartphone version of a wristwatch, hasn’t seen its patent application displayed in the news. But the potential applications for these “Google Goggles,” as one might call them, are enormous, both positive and negative. A hands-free smart-phone that can be used while carrying files, walking down the street, or even (dare we say) driving. And eventually, Google says, they’ll be indistinguishable from glasses. Google likely anticipates that they will be the next smartphone.
As you may recall, when the first iPhone hit the market, it was only a matter of time before other companies began designing their own smart phones, such as the Android. Which, of course, spouted an ocean of patent infringement litigation so convoluted and complex that it is still continuing today. How broad are the smartphone patents that Apple filed? How clever must a competitor be to “design-around” it? In that respect, Google is being very proactive. There’s no product on the market, and it already has at least four Google Goggle-related patents and who knows how many pending applications, that cover various aspects and properties of the goggles. The design. The nose-pad sensor. The screen display showing range and direction of ambient sounds. The use of each eyepiece as a separate display. This “divide and conquer” strategy may pay dividends in the future when the inevitable copying (or to put it more politely, ‘designing-around’) begins. It would be far easier to create a competing product that narrowly averts infringing one very big and broad Google patent, than to design-around a dozen or more patents with varying breadth and focus. Google will have a smorgasboard of options in deciding which patents to assert against which competitors when the time arises. This is one reason why, depending on your invention, multiple patents as opposed to a single patent may be advisable.
In any case, Google is boldly going where none have gone before . . . except, perhaps, in science fiction. One might be reminded of the 1991 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “The Game,” in which Our Brave Crew was introduced to headsets with tiny video screens held in front of the eyes, that they enthusiastically used to play video games. Of course, there was the pesky little detail that aliens were using the headsets as a version of mind-control that stimulated the portion of the frontal lobe that serves as the pleasure center of the brain, while simultaneously ‘dumbing down’ the prefrontal cortex’s higher reasoning properties. One has to wonder what effect Google Goggles may have on multi-task coordination (if you think walking while gum-chewing is hard . . .), not to mention our interactions with each other and pesky details like the sidewalk, the road and other obstacles. Risks notwithstanding, most people (including me) would probably give them a try, with the exception of perhaps fashion mavens who are more concerned with appearance than apparatus.
Enjoy the new “Google Goggles,” once they come out. But don’t forget to come up for air every once in a while to watch the sunset on the other side of the looking glass.