Google Said to be Working on VR-specific Flavor of Android

The tech colossus has reportedly assigned ‘tens of engineers’ to the project

Virtual reality was all the rage at the recently-concluded Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, with the SteamVR-powered HTC Vive headset stealing the show and some of Oculus Rift’s gradually-accumulated thunder. But brace yourselves for another head-turning entry into the nascent VR market. According to the Wall Street Journal, an effort to develop a VR-optimized version of Android is currently underway at Google. This, the paper says, is the search engine giant’s response to last year’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR by Facebook.

“Tens of engineers” are part of the project, per the Journal’s sources, who described the whole effort as “speculative.”  This is due to the small number of virtual-reality headsets that are currently out there. The team is reportedly helmed by Clay Bavor and Jeremy Doig. A vice president of product management at Google, the former was part of the the team that built Cardboard, a DIY headset that lets anyone with an Android smartphone experience VR on a shoestring — pre-assembled units can be found on the internet for as low as $10.

Image Credit: NFCWorld

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