Google Glass reportedly renamed Project Aura (not Ara) as the team works on other wearables

We’ve known since January that Google wasn’t ready to quit Glass. That was when Google officially graduated the project out of Google X Labs into its very own division, appointing renown Nest Thermostat co-founder Tony Fadell in charge. Now that they got that out of the way, Business Insider reports that Google has gone on a hiring spree, snatching up dozens of software developers and project managers from Lab126, the group who worked on the recently deceased Amazon Fire Phone.

With a brand new lease on life, Google Glass and the team behind will now officially be known as Project Aura — not to be confused with the Project Ara, another Google effort hell bent on launching the world’s first modular smartphone. Project Aura will be run by former Glass lead Ivy Ross as she reports to Fadell who heads Google Nest.

So, why the new name? Well, probably because the Aura team will be working on more than just Glass. New hire Dmitry Svetlov may have spilled the beans after mentioning on his LinkedIn bio that other “cool wearables” were also in the works (we originally got wind of this back in May). Of course, nothing is official until Google says it is, so we’ll be on the lookout for an actual announcement in the coming weeks.

[via The Wall Street Journal]