Google tries to make meta-reading bring its upcoming XR platform to its knees

据报道，Google曾要求Meta合作并为其即将推出的XR平台”做出贡献”，但Meta拒绝了。

The claim comes from a report in The Information today, which cites "a person involved in the negotiations."

In an article on Threads, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said, "You can tell they got this story from Google" and made the following statement:

"After years of not focusing on VR or being supportive of our work in this space, Google is pushing AndroidXR on partners and incredibly suggesting that we are the one threatening to split the ecosystem when in fact they plan to do exactly that.

我们很愿意与他们合作。他们可以立即将他们的应用带到Quest上！他们可以带来Play商店（以其当前经济模式运作的2D应用）并立即为所有开发者增加价值，这正是我们希望看到的开放应用生态系统。我们非常期待他们的加入。这将是他们的开发者和所有消费者的胜利，我们将继续努力实现。

However, they want us to agree to restrictive terms that require us to give up our freedom to innovate and build better experiences for people and developers. We've seen this before, and we think we can do better this time."

The Meta Quest operating system is an offshoot of Android's open-source core (known as AOSP), similar to the Fire OS strategy for Amazon's Fire tablets.Meta has been working on this for at least seven years, as it first appeared in the 2018 Oculus Go.

That same year, Lenovo launched a standalone headset running Daydream, Google's own VR operating system that includes Google Play Services, the Play Store, Google Apps, and core AOSP-based VR technology. However, in less than two years, at the end of 2019, Google abandoned the Daydream platform and no other standalone headsets have been reported to use it.

Fast forward to early 2023 and Samsung announced that it was working on XR hardware with Google handling the software. In June, Business Insider reported that the OS would be called Android XR, a new variant of Google's Android (AOSP + Google's closed-source supplement), just like Android TV.

While Samsung will be the first hardware maker to use Android XR, The Information reports that Google is also marketing the platform to other hardware makers, but no specific companies are listed and there are no reports of other companies accepting.

与此同时，Meta和LG在本周三确认了一项XR “战略合作”，包括”下一代XR设备的开发”。此前，韩国多家新闻机构报道称，LG将制造未来的Quest Pro头盔，运行Meta Quest平台，首款设备将于2025年推出，价格约为2000美元。

Google and Meta's XR strategies will likely be very similar, with both companies competing to attract hardware companies to adopt their platforms.

Meta's strengths are its large library of existing fully immersive content, its acquisition of eight experienced VR game studios, and the fact that it sells its in-house hardware at cost or even at a loss. But its weakness is its lack of an existing tablet computing platform, so it can't integrate across devices or easily introduce a range of 2D apps.

On the other hand, Google could bring its Play Store to Android XR, bringing millions of 2D apps and deep integration with your existing Android phone, Chrome passwords and bookmarks, and data from Google apps like Photos.

Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth has said that he asked Google to bring the Play Store to Meta Quest, but Google refused. in a post on X, Bosworth said that Google could even bring their own apps if they wanted to.

On the one hand, Google and Meta's partnership to build an XR platform could be a powerful counterweight to Apple Vision headsets, combining Quest's immersive content with the integration of Android phones and Google software.

But on the other hand, it's unclear how the business details of such a partnership would be implemented and how the company would make decisions when they have serious disagreements on core design and engineering aspects.The Information's report says that Google's offer includes Meta "contributing to the development of " Android XR " to contribute, suggesting that Google will have the final say.

At the same time, it's understandable why Meta might not want to rely on Google, either for business reasons or given Google's experience with XR and content platforms.Daydream was abandoned after less than two years, and its Stadia gaming platform was abandoned after three. They join the long list of Google graveyards.