It's possible for sure that Google will abandon this and I absolutely recommend anybody considering buying in do so only on the value they can see and realise immediately, not on any future promise.
But none of that takes away from the intellectually interesting part of this : what is new here, what possibilities does it open up? What implications does it have?
The main reason it's less likely this gets abandoned is because the spotlight in the the AI race is quickly moving to how much contextual information you can pour in about the user's ambient environment so that AI can actually do or say something useful for the user. That pretty much means glasses, and glasses mean you need a spatial computing OS to drive the underpinnings that the whole thing can operate on. Right now the technology for true AR glasses is still 2+ years out so the temporary placeholder for all that functionality is these larger headsets. But line of sight to all the pieces falling into place is there, so all the players are effectively in a long game where they are building up their ecosystems to be ready for the main game when it does arrive.
But none of that takes away from the intellectually interesting part of this : what is new here, what possibilities does it open up? What implications does it have?
The main reason it's less likely this gets abandoned is because the spotlight in the the AI race is quickly moving to how much contextual information you can pour in about the user's ambient environment so that AI can actually do or say something useful for the user. That pretty much means glasses, and glasses mean you need a spatial computing OS to drive the underpinnings that the whole thing can operate on. Right now the technology for true AR glasses is still 2+ years out so the temporary placeholder for all that functionality is these larger headsets. But line of sight to all the pieces falling into place is there, so all the players are effectively in a long game where they are building up their ecosystems to be ready for the main game when it does arrive.