What Happened to Google Glass?

in 2012 the internet was presented with what many were calling the next step in consumer electronic products google glass this set of eyewear promised to allow you to record the world around you check the time get directions and translate languages with the convenience of having a prescription put in them most thought that this was the future but years have passed and you hear almost nothing about this once revolutionary technology so what happened before we get ahead of ourselves to start this off we're going to have to go back around a decade when google x was founded this was a new research and development team created in response to the tech giant's growing dominance in the field they dropped a massive amount of money into this division to invent new technologies to maintain google's business edge moving forward and one of the first things they came up with was a pair of smart glasses though starting off as a bulky unit it was refined into the product that grabbed the world's attention in 2013 when the first version of the device was sold to the public well at least kinda you see google glass explorer edition was a pretty bare bones product at launch with only a few functions such as gps video recording and the ability to take calls on top of this it had an insanely short battery life that was reported to be less than an hour in some cases with these restrictions they only made a few thousand units at first for journalists developers influencers and 8000 people that begged for them on twitter i'm not joking even if you were selected from those interested you'd still need to shell out fifteen hundred dollars for the honor of being the first to get the tech this was not intended for prime time but it didn't stop everyone from talking about how these were going to be the next big thing the device worked by tethering the glasses to your phone which allowed you to display a variety of information on the upper left hand corner of your vision with this framework people watched to see where things would go as applications were developed and google rolled out the device to more consumers to show just how popular this thing was at the time casey neistat made a compilation of all the people that asked him about his pair within the span of a few days of wearing them yes is that google play is that google [Music] glasses as already mentioned many thought that smart classes were the next big thing but as the years went on you just stopped hearing about them that's not to say google had given up on the product in fact they did release a second generation with better specs but by the end of 2019 they released their last software update for google glass explorer so why wasn't google glass able to take off with the general public it's clear that there was interest when the product was first announced well the answer to that lies within a few different hurdles that google may have underestimated firstly some would say that this technology was simply ahead of its time one of the biggest complaints from early adopters was that the battery was very small due to the fact that you couldn't make the product too heavy or bulky as it was worn on your face even though battery technology has improved a lot over the past decade for a product like this most would expect a charge to last them for the entire day to be interested in buying a pair on top of this with a price over a thousand dollars you're dealing with a very specific group willing to pay so much for a product they really don't need another problem people had with the idea of smart glasses was the built-in camera as many saw it as getting rid of the last shred of privacy society still had for years there have been reports of companies listening to people on their phones but now with the camera pointed in clear view at all times if someone got a hold of all that data they would essentially be an all-seeing eye some governments went as far as to call for a ban on the device for this very reason to put it simply the dystopian outlook freaked many out moving on to the final point and oddly the most popular case i've seen against google glass is that it looked weird there's no doubt that this iteration of the product looked like technology right out of a science fiction movie and that wasn't necessarily a good thing those that wore them in public were stared at people started to mock the technology's users and most importantly the fact that you were never quite sure if the person was recording you led to several reports of altercations where google glass users were attacked when accused of filming a person without permission remember when trying to start off a trend you need to make people want to own the product for themselves and while google was able to spark fascination at the end of the day most people didn't want to pair for daily use leading to a corporate pivot in who the company targeted the technology to professionals it turns out there's still some hope for this invention as by 2017 google changed their focus to the enterprise edition of the product whether it be for a mechanic working on a piece of machinery or a doctor in surgery they now sell google glass to help businesses increase productivity with many large companies buying pairs for workers to this very day on top of this competitors have also made their own attempts to get into this vertical microsoft took smart glasses to the next level with a full mixed reality experience placing objects into the real world around you amazon echo frames went the opposite route by making a simpler product that focuses more on the audio components reading you notifications and such without a display or a camera these are also good since you don't look like a weirdo wearing them in conclusion while most people look at google glass as a failure i think that might have been our fault for over-hyping the technology it was a unique idea that google developed right as technology caught up to the futuristic concepts and at no point did they ever try to sell it to the masses will smart glasses ever go mainstream in the future possibly but for the time being it will stay as a small niche [Music] fortress

Channel: TheGamerFromMars

Views: 546,646

Keywords: thegamerfrommars, internet culture, Google, Google Glass

Id: RfqFgjrWHzU

Length: 6min 17sec (377 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2020