Amazon’s Fire Phone may have been a total flop, but Google seems to think the engineers may have been on to something.
A report from Business Insider details how Google Glass is being reborn as Project Aura with help from former employees of Amazon’s Lab126. The secret project, labeled in LinkedIn profiles as “Google Glass and Beyond,” is being developed under Google, not their new parent company Alphabet.
According to LinkedIn profiles, at least three former Lab126 employees, who had worked on software for products like the Fire TV and Amazon Echo, are now working on Project Aura. All three employees left Amazon between June and August, which could mean they were part of the “dozens” laid off from Lab126 after the Fire phone flop.
Business Insider also reports that the ex-Amazonians are joined by Apple vet Max Ratner, who worked with the iPhone group, and Adrian Wong, who left Google last year for Oculus only to rejoin Google as Project Aura got started in June.
The team isn’t complete yet, with job postings for various positions still posted online, so don’t expect Project Aura to produce any consumer products anytime soon.
Google hasn’t sold its headset to the public since earlier this year, but job postings from May point to an expansion from Glass to broader wearable options like VR headsets and gesture control technology.
