SO WHAT HAPPENED TO GOOGLE GLASS…?

Meera Vinod
Sep 8, 2018 · 5 min read
The Google Glass

Google glass was one of Google’s most ambitious projects. It debuted at the Google I/O 2012 with much pomp and fanfare with a spectacular demo from Sergey Brin and his skydiving team. Google glass was soon going to be the go-to tech wear of the future. The official Glass page on Google+ boasted the team’s vision for the glass as :- “We think technology should work for you — to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t.” It is so clear that Google really wanted its Glass to be the omnipresent gadget of the future.

So how has the journey been so far? Well,surprisingly sad. Just 2 years down the road, in January 2015,the Google Explorer’s program (aimed at early adopters of the technology) closed down and the project was moved out of the Google X lab where it was originally conceived.

SO HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Before peeking into its shortcomings let’s have a brief look into the product.

The Google glass is an optical head mounted display. It has a display,camera ,touch pad and a host of other inconspicuous elements that help it function. The most amazing thing about the glass is its revolutionary interface , ‘the glass’, which unlike anything that has existed before,sits directly on our face.It can do a lot of cool stuff like take your voice input and perform google search on the input keywords, take pictures and videos of the surroundings and share them,make reminders,alarms,use the Google map etc. Here is a fun list of everyday tasks you can accomplish with the glass :)

In spite of all of these features,the product was a ginormous failure.

For starters, the glass wasn’t really what one would call a finished product.It was a really polished prototype,but that was it.Nevertheless,the sales team went on to market the product as the future of wearable technology. This hyped people’s expectations. Quite obviously they didn’t feel the same way when they finally got to tinker with it themselves. This led to a lot of negative publicity on online forums regarding the product as being “plagued with bugs” ,“disoriented”, “headache inducing” etc..

The price was also hot topic of discussion. The early adopter programme enabled tech-lovers to buy the limited edition of the Glass at $1500 a piece. There was a lot of furor over it as many people wondered if the technology that went into it was ever worth that price . Tech geeks,Scott Torborg and Star Simpson published a “teardown” of the Google Glass, showing all the parts that make up the Glass and concluded that “it’s surprisingly simple.”

But the biggest problem with the Glass was that it didn’t have a definitive use-case. It didn’t make clear to the customers what problem it solved. Google marketed it as a wearable tech that could integrate well into the everyday human life pointing to features like maps and reminders. But the market was already aplenty with such devices with similar functionality in the form of smartphones and smartwatches,which also had cooler hassle-free interfaces.

Then came the issue of privacy. For example, this guy wanted to flaunt the durability of his Google glass, so he went ahead,took a shower wearing the Glass and posted it online. (It’s alright,it isn’t really NSFW,so you can click on the link :P) A lot of people didn’t find it funny though. There’s already a lot of creepy stuff floating around the web thanks to recording technology,it’s not like we’re asking for more stuff to make the practice more common-place. Movie-houses and restaurants banned the device out of fear that glass users would record videos without permission in their premises.There were cases of people driving and crashing because of using the device on the road.The general public were also wary of these people as there was always the possibility of being photographed or recorded without consent. Gradually the public coined a new term for the Glass-explorers — “Glassholes” [meaning a**holes who buy pointless tech to create nuisance for the public].

I guess, Google figured that this wasn’t going to work out with the average consumer any time soon.In Jan 2015,they shut down the Google X facility dedicated to Google glassware.

NOW WHAT ??

Well, the glass project isn’t dead yet. Tony Fadell, who previously worked at Apple and widely known as the ‘father’ of the iPod has taken over the project.The new iterations have vastly improved from the previous ones in terms of design and usability. Talking about usability, the Google folks have found a new area where people might find it less hostile to adopt the product: Enterprise.

Leading manufacturing companies like Boeing,GE and Airbus have adopted Google glass as a face-mounting gadget for their manufacturing floor workers where they can select suitable materials,keep track of floor operations,process time etc… all with the help of Google glass. The Glass has also found purpose in hospitals where doctors can conduct the surgeries wearing it thus enabling them to record and share the procedure in live format. Google is also integrating machine-learning and cloud technology into the device so that in the future it can add more capabilities like reading bar-codes,auto-translating languages etc.. This WIRED article talks in depth about the Glass’s experimentation with the enterprise domain.

It seems like the ‘Glass’ has finally found its true calling. I guess abandoning the decision to chase the average Joe has indeed boosted the Glass’s business prospects. And for now, the masses have vehemently rejected the idea of having a device poking an intrusive eye into their daily lives. But I do wonder, will there ever come a time when the product becomes so irresistible that people will be willing to trade their privacy and security, for the conveniences,however grandiose; that the product has to offer ?What do you think?


Hello reader! I’m Meera Vinod, an aspiring product manager. I write blogs about Product Management and product stories that I find interesting. You can find more about me here :)

Happy reading !

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