Google Glass: The Trials and Tribulations
Blaine Fitzgerald
The Google Glass was a very ambitious take on modern day wearable technology. The designing process began in 2010 and was not released to the public for sale until early 2013 as a prototype. This product was designed with a certain model in mind keeping it lightweight and allowing the wearer to see information via the HUD (heads-up display) during day to day life. Google X is the branch of the company that would be dedicated to designing and developing the Glass along with many other projects that were all geared towards improving the tech future ahead.
Initially the Glass carried a lot of weight behind it in terms of peoples’ excitement. This product brought the idea that we might really be heading into the future where we always will have some piece of technology attached to each part of our body. Wearable glasses had been thought of before in movies and media but never had been approached due to the technological capabilities that we were lacking. At the time our processors were too large and we did not have a way to make them smaller without detrimental performance drops.
Most of the features for the Glass are truly interesting with the ability to bring up your email, use google maps, voice recognition, and many, many other applications that were built surrounding the product. When March of 2013 came around Google had released the API for the Glass allowing other developers to create apps for the Glass to improve the experience and allow for more leeway with the user. Google also made it a point in their TOS that developers could not insert ads into their created applications, but was subject to change in the future.
By March 2013 the first beta testing for the Glass began with just around 8,000 people getting to test the product as long as they shelled out the $1,500 price tag. This is one of the largest pitfalls of the Glass and it is only the beginning. $1,500 dollars for a prototype and beta test kind of makes sense but to the general public it fell short. Not to mention this is a few years after the housing crisis where some families and people have not recovered as of yet which made it even more steep. It was clear that at this point the Glass was not for the average person but instead someone that is looking for a product like this specifically and is willing to spend the money.
In August 2013 the newest version of the Glass had been released, XE8, which introduced a media player into the ecosystem of the Glass along with rewind features and improvements to things like the voice recognition. This had people believing there was a bright future for the product because the updates were rolling out at a quick pace and they were constantly changing and improving the product.
That being said there were some real life applications where this wearable excelled compared to others. The introduction of the camera brought the ability to live stream interactions that would be used to train people in the future in some fields such as the medical field. In June of 2013 many surgeons had worn the Google Glass and used it to exhibit what a real surgery looks like without the room being filled with students. Each surgery was live streamed to a number of students and recorded for many others to see. This application was one of the better ways that Glass was used as it helped ease the patient where they don’t have to worry about being worked on by an amateur or watched by a crowd.
The target audience for the Glass came at a high price for Google as it was marketed heavily towards a niche community of people that either want wearable glasses and fashion designers. Fashion Designers, really? They took the product and showcased it during Fashion Week to bring in that specific audience to purchase the Glass. I think that this tactic was not the best approach to what could have been done in the marketing department. I believe if they pushed the Glass towards the general public with a smaller price point, then they would have done way better in terms of sales and longevity.
One of the largest deterrents of buying the Glass is the price. For the price of $1,500 dollars you can get yourself a prototype that is unable to be resold otherwise you face deactivation (Google TOS). We even see these types of things currently with the Apple Vision Pro which is sitting at a lofty $3,500 and it is their first VR product ever released. These types of launches often fall flat because there is no real reason for the average person to go out of their way to save and purchase them without any impactful benefit. These types of things are cause for discussion that companies believe that they are able to get away with whatever price they want without repercussions.
Criticism for the Glass comes far and wide with many people talking about the different aspects and how they can affect day to day life. One of the biggest concerns is the privacy of the Glass as it is always on your face as well as being voice activated, having the ability to take pictures, and other invasions of privacy not only to the wearer, but the people around them as well. These concerns even went to the extent of some companies outright banning Google Glass from the premises due to a breach of security.
Along with those criticisms the Glass was created too early on. If they had waited years for the proper technology then the product would not have suffered as many issues that were caused by the hardware side of things. People would often experience loss of image and improper loading due to the hardware they had during that time. Since then we have come a long way and have been able to make technology and computers smaller and smaller down to the nanometer.
With all of these shortcomings I would not be surprised if Google tries something similar to this in the future when it becomes more favorable with the technology that we create and the horizons we reach.
References
Weidner, J. B. (2023, July 20). Why google glass failed. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/052115/how-why-google-glass-failed.asp
Reuters, T. (2014, November 15). Is Google Glass already losing its Mojo?. Gadgets 360. https://www.gadgets360.com/wearables/features/is-google-glass-already-losing-its-mojo-621345
Leswing, K. (2023, March 15). Google ends enterprise sales of Google Glass, its augmented reality smartglasses. CNBC.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/15/google-discontinues-google-glass-enterprise-end-to-early-ar-project.html
Ohio State University (2023, August 7). First US surgery transmitted live via Google Glass (w/ Video). Medical Xpress.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-08-surgery-transmitted-google-glass-video.html
