History of Google Cardboard

In 2014, the world was going to be taken by surprise with a new Big Bang of an affordable piece of technology: Google Cardboard and VR cardboard headsets. 

The original Google Cardboard is a Virtual Reality headset and platform developed by Google, that got it’s name from the material used to build the device. It was Google’s successful attempt to create an affordable VR viewer which also allowed users to build their own. Encouraging the use and development of VR apps the device can be used with pretty much any modern smartphone, and with the help of special lenses the usually flat content is transformed into interactive material. 

The platform was created by David Coz and Damien Henry, French Google engineers, and presented in the Google I/O 2014 developers conference, where a Cardboard viewer was given away to all attendees. The Cardboard software development kit (SDK) was released for the Android and iOS operating systems; the SDK’s VR View allows developers to embed VR content on the web as well as in their apps.

Through March 2017, over 160 million Cardboard-enabled app downloads were made. By November 2019, over 15 million viewer units had shipped.