This week, Google has reportedly appointed its former VP of product management for Google Apps (who also is behind the experimental Google Cardboard VR), Clay Bavor, to be VP of a dedicated division for virtual reality.

A cardboard do-it-yourself VR kit is not exactly a high-margin tech product, and not something where you'd expect Google to create a new, full division of its company with dozens of new, open positions looking to be filled. Here are some reasons why Google, which has so far only dabbled in DIY virtual reality for smartphones, may be doubling down on VR now.

Timing: The VR Tipping Point

This year is when virtual reality finally comes to consumers, as headsets like the Facebook-backed Oculus Rift, the HTC and Valve collaboration Vive, and PlayStation VR are all poised to hit store shelves for the first time in 2016.

But this year is just the beginning, which could be why Google is jumping in now. According to figures from tech analyst Digi-Capital cited by InformationWeek, virtual reality revenues are expected to reach $30 billion by 2020.

Selling first-generation VR headsets to early adopters this year won't generate that kind of cash, especially considering that to run smoothly, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive will require the latest computers and GPUs, approximately seven times more powerful than the average home PC in use right now. That narrows the market to about one percent of PC owners. PlayStation VR, of course, requires a PlayStation 4.

But as a rule, technology tends to get cheaper, faster, and smaller (and also more ubiquitous) every two years or so, a phenomenon described by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore half a century ago. The market for VR is likely to explode in the coming years, especially as it goes mobile. 

As Digi-Capital wrote in its analysis, "Moore's Law and a flagging PC market searching for growth could bring [VR] within reach of mass consumers by 2017," adding that "we might need to wait for the second generation of Mobile VR with full positional tracking... in 2017/2018 for it to become a true mass market."

Rather than seeing Google's move as a late entry, perhaps the company is looking at that sort of timeline as it relates to smartphone technology. After all, Samsung Gear VR found a use for the ridiculously high-resolution Quad HD screens that many scoffed at just a couple years prior as an unnecessary gimmick.

VR Isn't Just a Game

The first generation of VR -- with the half-exception of Samsung Gear VR -- largely revolves around gaming, and naturally so. Besides being an obvious application of the immersive technology, PC gamers tend to have the most powerful rigs to run these headsets.

But the applications for VR are eventually much vaster, as Google is clearly aware of after its Cardboard VR was credited last week for helping a doctor with a life-saving procedure on a sick baby. VR could bring practical benefits to other important fields, enterprise, and eventually could be a major way people consumer media, as Hollywood and Silicon Valley knows.

Google has already begun introducing Cardboard to schools this year, and the company is beginning to enhance the product through developers. On Wednesday, Google announced an update bringing spatial audio to its Cardboard VR. Spatial audio reproduces the way humans hear sounds in the real world, and now it's supported by Cardboard's software development kit (SDK) for Android.

"Human beings experience sound in all directions -- like when a fire truck zooms by, or when an airplane is overhead. Starting today," announced Google Cardboard product manager Nathan Martz, "the Cardboard SDKs for Unity and Android support spatial audio, so you can create equally immersive audio experiences in your virtual reality (VR) apps. All your users need is their smartphone, a regular pair of headphones, and a Google Cardboard viewer."

While Google isn't letting on about any possible plans beyond Cardboard, the large, yet-undeveloped applications for VR has clearly lit a fire under the company.

Especially when you consider how Google makes its (boatloads of) money.

Virtual Reality Advertising

Google is a massive multifaceted tech firm founded on search. Google is a massively successful business founded on selling ads.

This could be the ultimate reason Google is getting serious about VR, as Forbes pointed out. In order to continue dominating the search and advertising business that gives Google (or Alphabet) the kind of cash to throw at risky propositions like delivering Internet via hot air balloon-drones, a Fiber-optic ISP seemingly designed to encourage and mitigate barriers for its direct competitors, or curing death by aging, Google needs to win the next field of digital advertising.

And it appears that VR has a good chance of being just that. By getting as many cheap VR kits to as many smartphone owners as it can, and dedicating a division to focus on how the company can take advantage of VR, Google may be taking its first steps towards getting a new generation of immersive marketing right in everyone's faces.