Google kills its augmented reality “Measure” app
As first spotted by Android Police, the Android app is no longer available via a Play Store search, and a direct link to the listing shows a new message in the description: "This app is no longer supported and will not be updated. Users who previously installed this app can continue to use it on compatible devices."
Measure was pretty neat. The app used a smartphone to measure real-life objects through the magic of augmented reality. AR tracks real-life objects in order to accurately place virtual items in a camera feed, and if the tracking is good enough, an app can turn that data into a pretty good estimate of distance. Measure was never good enough for applications like detailed carpentry work—we found that short measurements were accurate to within half an inch, and longer measurements could be off by several inches—but the best measuring tape is the one you have with you. Plus, the app worked great if you wanted to measure something large, like a telephone pole, which would be pretty difficult with a tape measure.
Google kills product Google kills its augmented reality “Measure” app Google is killing “Google Play Movies & TV” on smart TVs Google is killing the Google Shopping app Google’s VR dreams are dead: Google Cardboard is no longer for sale Ex-Stadia developers dish on Google’s mismanagement and poor communication View more stories The Measure app started life on another dead Google product: Project Tango, which loaded a smartphone with specialized sensors, enabling early portable augmented reality on development devices in 2014 and a commercial device, the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, in 2016. In 2018, Measure arrived on regular Android phones without all the extra sensors; Google's ARCore augmented reality toolkit did all the tracking through the camera hardware. Measure was such a good idea that Apple released a similar app for iPhones in 2018.
