Google X director Babak Parviz founded and led both the Google Glass and contact lens projects at Google, but it appears he has now left the Mountain View corporation in favor of Amazon. This news comes shortly after just two months ago stepping aside to let former Old Navy and Gap marketing VP Ivy Ross take the Google Glass helm.
It was only last week that Parviz talked at the Wearable Technologies Conference in San Francisco, saying that the Glass project is “not necessarily the definitive answer” to where computing is going in the future. He predicts that the days of walking around seeing wearables on heads are still 15 years away. But if and when that happens, he likely won’t be at Google.
He made the announcement very vaguely on his Google+ feed tonight, leaving many to wonder what exactly he meant by posting a picture of the Amazon logo and simply saying “status: super excited.” But a deeper look at his profile revealed that he updated his “About” section to reflect his new position as well (emphasis mine):
Having worked at companies ranging from tiny start-ups to huge corporations and universities in Europe and the US, I have found each one to be fun in its own unique way. I founded and led a few efforts at Google (among them, Google Glass and Google Contact Lenses are public so far prior to moving to Amazon and work on a few other things now…
There’s no word on what he’s going to be doing at Amazon, but he did lead some of Google’s more ‘futuristic’ endeavors, an area that Amazon has yet to — at least publicly — make an entrance. He mentions doing work on a “few other things,” but it’s unclear whether he means within Amazon or elsewhere.
We’ve reached out to both Google and Amazon for comment…
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