Google Beam Brings More Natural Video Conversations Within Reach

At Google I/O 2025, most of the hands-on demos were dedicated to Gemini AI and the exciting Android XR glasses. But tucked in a corner of the grounds around the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA, was a set of windowless rooms showing off one of the company's most promising innovations: Google Beam. In one of those rooms, I had a video chat where my conversation partner literally popped off the screen in 3D. Google Beam is the new name for Project Starline, which the company has been working on for years. The renaming was announced during the Google I/O keynote to coincide with the news that HP would be producing Beam units for sale by the end of the year. While Google didn't share many details, these commercial and enterprise products will run roughly the same technology as what I got to experience, though they'll look more like conventional TVs than prototype devices. I'd gotten a preview of then-Project Starline at the Code Conference in October 2023, and the hardware at ... Read full article.