Google Glass is another device that passes into the search giant’s ‘elephant graveyard’. The company has updated its support site to report that it has canceled its sale from March 15, 2023it will not offer any software updates and will only officially support them until next September.
It’s been over a decade since Google Glass was announced. A connected glasses project, very interesting on paper and that it was destined to shine in the emerging wearables market that was beginning to explode at that time. The original project ended in fiasco.
A questionable design; malfunction with bugs and lack of fluidity; limited autonomy; high price and serious privacy issues with usage bans around the world, they made Google take the decision to suspend sales of the original model. The project passed to an independent division under the command of Tony Fadell (an ex-Apple engineer who was on the team of design guru “Jony” Ive, creator of devices such as the iPod) and focused on the professional market with the subsequent release of the ‘Enterprise Edition’ version.
Goodbye to Google Glass (again and now definitely)
The business version has had a minimal echo as it happened in consumption and Google has shelved it again: Thank you for over a decade of innovation and partnership. As of March 15, 2023, we will no longer sell the Glass Enterprise Edition. We will continue to support them until September 15, 2023.”can be read on the support page.
Existing customers can continue to use the glasses indefinitely, but without support starting in September. Most of the applications and features that work today, such as meet on glassthey should continue to do so for the foreseeable future, and companies that have developed their own software for the platform should be able to provide updates.
But Google will no longer sell Google Glass nor have plans to provide bug fixes, security patches, or other feature updates. The company will keep the latest version of the system image for download until April 1, 2024.
Has all the investment been lost?
Not really. Google Glass was a device ahead of its time and that is where part of its problems and lack of interest from consumers, companies and developers came from. But all the experience collected must be valuable for the future and the commercialization of other wearables. In fact, Google is still in the ointment and is developing augmented reality glasses.
It must be said that none of these glasses has really worked in sales. We have the greatest proof that a giant like Apple, which sells everything it produces on a massive scale, It has not even dared to enter this segment yet. A few years ago its CEO, Tim Cook, recognized that “the technology itself to create this type of device with quality”, did not exist. And not just glasses anymore. Virtual/augmented reality devices have not exploded in sales as the industry anticipated.
