I think the fundamental issue with Glass was putting a camera on it. Imagine if it didn't have a camera but was otherwise unaltered. It would have been a forcing function to actually find out more things to do with it than be a head mounted camera. Most of the social stigma would have been gone and it might be a thriving device now.
Get it going, add the "obvious" camera functionality on some models and off it goes.
Instead the camera was fundamental to the design, and to my knowledge represented about 90% of the use-cases demonstrated for the device...without even offering AR.
The fundamental issue was the geekiness of it all. Look at the lengths Apple was going to show Apple Watch as something fashionable when introducing it. Google failed and projects a worse image than a bluetooth headset or a Segway.
The camera doesnt help and helps to rationalize it as a failure but was not the main factor.
This is what most people fail to understand about Apple's methodology. They were probably working on the watch years ago but waiting for the technology to catch up to the point where they could deliver a compelling product.
Google, on the other hand, shoots first, releases often, and isn't worried if it totally misses the mark.
Perhaps this reflects on Google's aggressive start-up mentality.
The fundamental issue is that glass is a blatantly obvious design, with no sophistication whatsoever, one that couldn't even get close to being charmingly anything. It's an ugly stick in front of some (admittedly ugly/geeky) glasses, with touchpad (!) and voice controls crammed together. No amount of functionality can account for the design and usability horror that this device has unleashed since it's conception.
The first time I saw one device like this(outside science fiction films) was in the America's Cup sailing competition, the sailors used that as a computer's display, people there showed the thing to me and it was pretty cool and very useful.
But adding a camera that could be recording ON LINE in front of my face... wow, it its creepy and weird, and I don't want to have anything to do with the thing.
I don't want private companies like Google or Facebook bribing people into sharing my private conversations with anyone, or the gobertment of the US(or any other gobertment), by the way.
A world in which everything you do or say is recorded in a world I don't want to take part in.
Having lived through the camera-phone and smartphone revolutions... I don't think anyone ever thought that was creepy and weird. It was always pretty well received as far as I know.
Absolutely. People weren't objecting to the device because of subtle design details like it being possible to tell if people were browsing the web. People were objecting to the device without having seen one in the flesh because they found the idea of people walking around with a device designed to inconspicuously record everything creepy.
The original article has it 100% backwards: it's not concealing Glass wearer's internet browsing that'll make it more socially acceptable, it's making the recording glaringly obvious.
You are 100% correct, and I've thought so since the day it was announced. I believe this extends to all wearables, such as watches. Apple intelligently chose to leave the camera off, which might be the most distinguishing feature, from a potential for success angle. I love the idea of both watch and glass, but would never wear glass purely due to the awkwardness it would cause to those around me. I can deal with a little nerdy. Afterall what's nerdy today can be fully acceptable in no time.
I got to try a Glass this summer for a few afternoons (though I didn't actually use it much, I really didn't like it). Anyway, I'd definitely prefer a smartwatch over a Glass-without-camera (or one with camera, for that matter). It's more stylish (or can be), way less awkward to take a quick glance at your wrist than to stare towards an empty spot of space above and to the right of your right eye.
My concerns about the privacy aspects of the camera-glasses somewhat evaporated when I realized this thing makes you look geekier than when wearing one of those oldschool Bluetooth headsets. And those didn't "grow on us", either.
BTW, I suppose they would also make "reversed" Glasses? One of the kids that wanted to try it out didn't have very good vision in his right eye ... :/
And yes, especially if someone only just got one, you can bet it's taking pictures all the time. That's what it does. Though if you can be bothered to sort through it all, it does reward you with a bunch of pretty great shots, by sheer volume and chance :) I was also impressed by the resolution projected into that tiny prism.
And the arrogant and elitist facial expressions and body language of the glassholes posing for pictures of themselves wearing glass certainly didn't help either.
So, if they had invented something completely different instead of the thing that was possible to invent, it would have been a better product?
Maybe. Do you think they said "we have some great ideas for a head-mounted camera, that have nothing to do with vision, but we put on your eyes anyway (because....?), but let's do a silly camera thing instead?
To this day it befuddles me how the key people inside Google responsible for the roll out of Glass - whoever they were - were allowed to bungle it, in such a slipshod manner.
After all, this was not some GOOG-411 [1] - which I absolutely adored when it first rolled out and which saved many a day for me, during its brief lifespan - or some barge [2] or one of many other Google's myriad off-the-cuff projects.
This was GLASS ! Possibly the single most compelling offering from Google since Street View, practically bursting at the seams with humongous promise and potential for humankind.
No less than a squadron of industrial design gurus, consumer perception honchos, privacy experts and outreach groups from local governments and hospitality specialists representing the sentiments of bar and restaurant owners, should have been assembled to capture feedback, early in the crafting of such an important device.
At the very least - and at the bare minimum - someone close to Sergey [3] should have blurted,
"Perhaps, we should offer a bare-bones version with simple
video & audio capture capabilities, to at-risk individuals
like inner-city youth, who are persistently subject to
unjustified stop-and-frisk searches [4] by various peace
officers, at a nominal throwaway price. The public outcry
over privacy would be a fraction of what it would be otherwise
because the perception of Glass would no longer be of some rich
kid's tech toy but a legal defense weapon for the capture of
circumstantial evidence in the hands of those who need such a
first-person account device, the most."
Glass is too important - and the consequences of its large scale adoption too profound - for some crazy last-ditch measures to have not been deployed.
I can't see emphasising the usefulness of the camera to people for recording people that really don't want to be recorded making wearing Glass less socially suicidal.
And you can pretty much guarantee that youths in problem areas will be those least likely to wear a visible recording device in public, because as unpleasant as the risk of running into a cop on a power trip is, it pales into comparison with the certainty of the local gangs taking exception to people walking around their neighbourhood with a recording device.
Edit: if you actually wanted to reduce police abuses you'd lobby to make it compulsory for law enforcement to record their own actions whilst on active duty instead. Though winning a supply contract with the NYPD would also have the effect of killing it stone dead as a fun consumer product, as well as be a very unusual move for Google.
> "Perhaps, we should offer a bare-bones version with simple video & audio capture capabilities, to at-risk individuals like inner-city youth, who are persistently subject to unjustified stop-and-frisk searches [4] by various peace officers, at a nominal throwaway price.
That's a great way to get those people jailed under wiretap laws. This already happens to some people who record with the phones interactions with police.
With regards to videotaping, there is an important legal distinction between a visual photographic record (fully protected) and the audio portion of a videotape, which some states have tried to regulate under state wiretapping laws.
Such laws are generally intended to accomplish the important privacy-protecting goal of prohibiting audio "bugging" of private conversations. However, in nearly all cases audio recording the police is legal.
In states that allow recording with the consent of just one party to the conversation, you can tape your own interactions with officers without violating wiretap statutes (since you are one of the parties).
[1]
Police officers may not confiscate or demand to view your digital photographs or video without a warrant.
Police may not delete your photographs or video under any circumstances.
Police officers may legitimately order citizens to cease activities that are truly interfering with legitimate law enforcement operations.
Since Sergey was cheating on his wife with the Glass marketing manager, he probably wasn't very objective about whether the project was a good idea or not, and said "yes" to her every hairbrained idea because he didn't want her to cut off his nookie.
In the very first batch of paragraphs this article gets a very fundamental thing about Glass and the backlash to it wrong.
The article tries to claim that owners became known as glassholes because they wore computers on their face, and then tries to argue that less conspicuous implementations will be accepted more easily.
Meanwhile in reality people got upset because Glass owners had a camera on their face the entire time.
Edit: Turns out the entire article is in fact trying to claim that Glass is disliked because it's too obvious, and that it'll be just fine when it's near invisible.
I feel one must question why people are upset about glass-cameras but are perfectly fine with omnipresent CCTV or NSA data collection. The Surveillance Camera Man video series highlights the same issue.
Do people genuinely care about privacy, but only think about it when the breach is obvious and in their face?
Glass intrudes in private spaces normally off-limits to CCTV, and it's internet connected so could easily stream the video. Worse than that, the corporation providing it has shown they're interested in collecting as much information as possible (e.g. trawling for wireless data with streetview cars). Such centralised information banks give that corporation a lot of power and are vulnerable to retrospective government requests for the data. Google has enough info about me as it is thanks (search, analytics, docs, emails, now video).
That's completely different to most closed circuit TV cameras which record for a limited time and without great quality, for purposes like security against burglary. Just as I'd object to having a permanently on internet-connected camera in my home, I'd also object to someone wearing Google Glass there. Even more objectionable would be hundreds of thousands of google connected video cameras walking the streets. Maybe that makes me unusual, but apparently not given the reception of Glass.
The camera was a terrible mistake from my perspective and completely put me off the possibility of owning it, and also puts me off Google the company for condoning such an obvious invasion of the privacy of others without their consent, and people who wear it for being so tone deaf - it would be like walking around with your camera phone permanently switched on pointing at your focus of attention - how weird and creepy. The whole thing reminds me of The Entire History of You or the telescreens in 1984 - I don't want to record everything I do, nor do I want others to do so without my consent, just as I don't want everything I write on the internet to be retrievable in an instant catalogued against every alias I've ever used. Maybe that will happen one day and there's nothing we can do about it, but there are definitely downsides.
PS I'm not perfectly fine with omnipresent CCTV or NSA data collection either; nice straw man.
Having a friend filming your conversations feels a lot more personal and tangible in my mind. A dumb example, but let's say you talk to your friend about how you hate your boss or how you cheat on your partner. Your friend can very easily cause you a lot of problems by just emailing that conversation to someone else.
While CCTV and the NSA are terrible in their own right the damage that they can do is at a whole different level. (Except on particular cases) they don't care too much about the specifics of your personal life.
Your friend can repeat what you've said to others without any device at all. He can also make an audio recording of your comments while pretending to fiddle around on his phone. Hell, he can do it without taking his phone out of his pocket. People are a-ok with this state of affairs, but are appalled at the idea of being "surreptitiously" recorded by someone wearing possibly the least stealthy device ever created by man.
Why? Because a legitimate fear of being recorded isn't what lies at the heart of mainstream hatred toward Glass.
> Meanwhile in reality people got upset because Glass owners had a camera on their face the entire time.
This is surely the biggest thing. It always seemed like a very tone-deaf move by Google to include a camera. It's not like Glass wouldn't have still been useful without it...
Actually, the camera is just about the only useful part of Glass. My wife and I went house hunting last year and it was really convenient to quickly snap photos of what we liked/didn't like at each house. Sure I could've done that with a phone but or camera but Glass was much more convenient.
Same thing at family gatherings and hanging out with kids - having such a convenient camera available allows for some amazing shots one would probably never get otherwise.
IMO it's sad that there was such a social backlash against Glass. If one wants to be creepy there are much less conspicuous cameras to use.
I don't it was tone-deaf at all. There were many action shots that I got while playing sports that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
The main problem was people thinking that the presence of a camera meant that you were using it all the time. Worry less about Glass and more about the guys doing upskirt videos with their shoes or specially rigged duffle bags.
The difference is that there's no danger of shoe cameras for upskirt videos turning into a trend used by any significant share of the population. I don't mind a single smart glasses user, but I'm wary of glasses with cameras becoming common enough that you're effectively always potentially being filmed.
And Glass, more than just a smart pair of glasses, is a symbol foreshadowing such a future.
I suspect that body cameras similar to the ones people want cops to wear will become popular soon. They will be marketed as a safety device even though their primary use will be probably be for Instagram. Reactions will be interesting to watch given that the purported primary purpose will be for safety.
It's dead with consumers. Business use cases can make sense, though. If you can make a warehouse picker 5% more efficient you can easily save the cost of the device, etc..
Still seems profitable quite quickly if it actually did give a 5% productivity gain.
Keep in mind that the ratio of devices per person is more likely to be about 1:3 rather than 1:1. A device can work much more hours per week than the average human, and it only needs to stop for a battery recharge.
I like Thad Starner's other designs[0] a lot more than Google Glass.
Granted, they are bulky and dorky, but at least they had a keyboard and a hackable operating system (linux with an emacs-based ui if I remember well).
I wouldn't mind a setup with a tiny screen, a wire running from the back of my glasses to my pocket, connected to a raspberry pi or similar (heck, even my cell phone) and some sort of chorded keyboard that I can use without looking at it.
They had Bluetooth keyboard support, and ripped it out in a (forced) update. They almost had a hackable operating system - it was possible to set up a Linux install in a chroot and use that - but they went around breaking things, and since there's not much point without the keyboard, no one's gotten it working again.
This a bit of an aside, I have slight astigmatism, and I have some prescription glasses in a drawer somewhere that I haven't put on in ten years. Fixing my less than perfect vision is not worth the hassle of having to wear a device on my head all the time. I haven't worn a watch on my wrist since...probably elementary school--so the 70's. For a few years I carried a pocket watch, now my cell phone is my pocket watch, and that is a significantly better situation than wearing a piece of tech on my wrist. So it seems like the all the tech companies are trying to make me wear something that I have already concluded I don't want to wear.
In the case of watches it seems less strange--plenty of people love watches on their wrist. So Apple and Motorola can sell to them. But the only people who wear glasses are people with vision problems. They do their best to make them comfortable and fashionable, both I don't know anyone with good vision wishing they could wear glasses. So if Google can make a version that works with prescription lenses, and sell to people that need them, but it seems like it's going to be a much harder push to get people who don't wear glasses every day to commit.
Many many people wear contact lenses rather than glasses for style reasons. I probably know more people who have contacts than glasses, and none of them are athletes.
It's not exactly a non-starter though. These days few people in the first world wear glasses or watches out of necessity, but some do wear watches or glasses for fashion.
Google Glass's biggest problem is really wrong timing. In fact, all of the wearables that are coming out now have the problem of wrong timing. We hardly have exhausted the applications of mobile computing. And the applications that do exist are only a version of desktop and big computing devices retrofitted onto mobile.
The true vision of what "a computer in every pocket" can do has hardly been scratched. Things like accepting credit cards on the spot with an iPhone or barcode scanning with mobile cameras are true examples of that kind of vision. 3D scanning, whenever it arrives, will be another example. Flashlight, pocket camera, video conferencing, and digital level are also great examples.
One of the great ways I hacked my life to use a "pocket computer" was using it as a digital briefcase where the phone would sync all my work files on my work computer the moment I connected to work wifi and sync it again to my home computer the moment I connected to home wifi. (I know it's not needed anymore.)
That kind of true innovation where you give the mobile phone actual mobile purpose is what makes the phone a great device. Retrofitting apps from desktop to mobile fits only in some (venture capital)/(mobile frontier)/(developing country) scenario.
To immediately warp speed to wearable computing and to retrofitting desktop or mobile apps onto wearable platforms is immature. There are some great uses of wearables like Google Glass in the areas of augmented reality. But very few companies are even thinking about it. Other uses for Google Glass are hindered because of privacy alarmists who cannot stop thinking about sinister uses. And of course there is the cultural stigmatism of having a computer on your face.
Wait, "dead"? Last I checked, the only thing you can get right now is the explorer edition (read: beta) device at the "no random consumers" price point of $1500. Google is on record as saying this is supposed to get another refresh and a lower price point in the future.
Seems mighty premature to call the device dead when it's both not out yet and the beta users are still getting updates.
> Seems mighty premature to call the device dead when it's both not out yet and the beta users are still getting updates.
The updates that have gone out to beta users have been extremely minimal; there can't be more than a couple devs working on them. And on net, they've removed more features than they've added, and broken about as many things as they've fixed.
I think it's easy to dismiss Google Glass because it's never been "necessary", in the entire history of human civilization, to have a computer on your face.
But in order to test the "is this a fad or is this truly transformative" question, my guess is that at its core there is no question this is a transformative technology. Here's how I've reasoned to this conclusion.
Having an unobtrusive computer on your face, where you get no-friction, continuous access to the user's basic senses of sight and sound while they're out living their lives (far more time than your typical person spends sitting in front of a computer), is what this is all about. If you can't imagine uses for computers unless we're sitting in front of them or holding them in our laps, my hunch is you're not very bullish on human innovation.
Hmm, as a techie I think its somewhat of a shame that Google Glass is dead. But as a person concerned about privacy I'm glad it's dead. Meeting people and speaking to those wearing them was just too non-human to be comfortable.
I don't necessarily think launching/announcing it in its beta state was the wrong thing to do (as opposed to launching a finished product like Apple does). Imagine if they spent all the resources to "finish" the product and then find out it was a failure?
They obviously learnt a lot from the initial public reactions and I am sure that a lot of Glass technology has made its way back to smart phones and smart watches (especially voice recognition).
A company I consult with has done a lot of research on Glass users over the past several months. I won't, and can't, share any of those insights, but I can say this: the office still has 40 glass devices sitting in boxes because not one of the employees is tempted to use one or take one home.
Most interestingly, Google is willing to simply write off "$70,000" in devices. Their budget is unbelievable.
I think the problem has more to do with mass production and marketing than it is with privacy concerns, etc.
If Google glass sold for $100~$200 price range and could be purchased everywhere (like Chromecast which I got in India for $40) it would have been a big hit.
I wouldn't exactly call the Chromecast a win from a performance stand point (I'm not sure about their sales).
It rarely works as intended. It is constantly freezing and losing connection between devices. For me, Airplay works 10x better and the stream is much smoother (both devices are on the same network).
What about them? Have you ever peeked into how much market share do they have? Let me guess, no. And Chromecast? Nobody knows what that is aside from geeks obsessed with Google.
Chromecast is currently the 2nd best seller product on Amazon in the Electronics category, having recently dropped from 1st where it stayed for months. On what exactly do you base the idea that nobody knows what it is?
If you compare the reach of AirPlay against the reach of Chromecast there's a difference of at least TWO orders of magnitude; that's my basis. And I'm not an apple fanboy (gohrt), I'm more of a reality fanboy.
AirPlay is not a device, it's a technology implemented by multiple devices, and it's four years old (compared to Chromecast, which is barely one). Comparing the two directly is nonsensical.
Google have absolutely killed in the Smartphone market. Not _mostly_ their own devices, though they've introduced a few. The heart and soul of Android is absolutely Google though.
Glass was, however, a pretty stunning failure on multiple fronts, and from that and others (G+, backlash over Streetview) I'd argue the company really doesn't get the social positioning of its products.
I think this post is falsely trying to accuse Google of something.
Remember Google is a company that doesn't make money out of its products and a lot of their stuff are open sourced like Android for people to be able to keep them alive.
What happened with Google glass and its on the makings documentary about it, is that they wanted to make some breakthrough in technology. They never planned on making the glass work 100% or become and iphone that everyone would kill to acquire, because they are not looking into that kind of profit.
I find that post being on some short of a steak with google and wants to blame them for their own product and how its doing...
it might of been a breakthough technology-wise, but it hit a massive horrible wall social-wise. I'd say that the social barrier is probably the more important breakthough at the current moment than the tech one, and it does seem google is falling a bit short on that.
It doesn't help that google is a data company as well, probably not the most pleasant brand-name to stick on such a device
Get it going, add the "obvious" camera functionality on some models and off it goes.
Instead the camera was fundamental to the design, and to my knowledge represented about 90% of the use-cases demonstrated for the device...without even offering AR.