Google Labs

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2023: Abolishing the Division

On February 8, 2023, it became known about the abolition of the virtual reality technology division (Google Labs) at Google. His team will move to another structure of the company - Tech & Society.

It is reported that Clay Bavor, vice president of Google and head of Google Labs, will leave the company. It was Bavor who oversaw many of the company's virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) projects, including Google's ARCore platform and early hardware solutions. In particular, Bavor led the development of Google's AR headset. He was appointed to the post of head of Google Labs in 2021.

Google Labs Center

It is known that Google does not plan to look for a replacement for Bavor. Instead, the Google Labs team will be redistributed and partially included in the Tech & Society division under the leadership of James Manyika. The company's work on augmented reality projects will be divided, and its main part will fall under the leadership of Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's head of platforms and ecosystems, and Rick Osterloh, who runs devices and services.

Clay Bavor, after leaving Google, intends to establish a new startup in the field of artificial intelligence. His partner in this initiative will be Bret Taylor, former co-director general of Salesforce and former CTO of Facebook (owned by Meta, which is recognized in Russia as an extremist organization; activities on the territory of the Russian Federation are prohibited). The new firm is expected to begin operations in March 2023.

We share an obsession with the latest advances in AI and are excited to create a new company that will apply artificial intelligence to some of the most important challenges in the business, "Bavor said.[1]

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