Is Google Glass Dead in January 2015?

The Google Glass we have seen and used is dead. In my estimation, Google always planned to end the Glass Explorer program but not in this manner. The nature of creating a public beta for a device charging $1500 for participation and calling it an early Explorers program meant it was a limited time program that should have rolled into the introduction of a mass-market version. Instead, Google has ended the Glass program because their solution had a few key failures in both perception and hardware. These key failures resulted in public backlash, privacy issues, social issues, difficult user experiences, and lack of compelling reasons for purchase. Nearly all of these are not easily overcome without starting over. Therefore, the announcement is, in fact, the end of Google Glass as we know it. This is akin to the closure of Google Buzz and the subsequent launch of Google . Both were social networks built by Google, but no one considers Google an update to Google Buzz. Google Buzz is dead. So is Google Glass.

No Glass, No Glory

The first signs that Google was taking a long hard look at Glass was in its non-appearance at the Google I/O keynote after having previously been a skydiving keynote spectacle. In case anyone wasn't sure, Glass as we know it is dead. Try looking up the highly touted Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and Google Ventures backed Glass Collective venture. Now, it just redirects to the Google Glass homepage. I can't recall a single article mentioning a company that was funded by the Glass Collective.

It Never Lived Up to the Original Vision

Let's skip over the 'Glass is doomed' death knell by well-known shower-wearing Glass enthusiast Robert Scoble. Hi Robert! Let's go back to the beginning. Google announced that they were making a heads-up wearable device and started with a video of things that in the next ~3 years, Glass never came close to doing. I posted a breakdown on Quora about the technological disconnect of a consumer-facing device achieving this level of interaction in the immediate future. Mind you, I absolutely love the heads-up wearables concept, owned a Glass, worked on an unreleased Glasswear app, and am thankful for this failed experiment. The bar they set was too high and too unrealistic for Glass, even though they hit on key user experiences in the video that would make a heads-up wearable compelling. In real life, the battery never lasted more than 40 minutes of active use in my experience, and that was for a device that didn't do all that much.

The Public Didn't Like It. Owners Didn't Like Wearing It.

Corriere della Sera, an Italian newspaper, did an interesting number of articles chronicling the negative opinions of Google Glass. At the same time, the digital publication Vice did a more upbeat story on the Google Glass Explorer programme. While on the surface, it appeared to be polarized, most people agreed that the hardware and the price were the main drawbacks. Saturday Night Live pretty much summed up the Google Glass user experience with one skit. Fred Armisen showed simultaneously how very wrong certain things were, such as the whiplash movement to wake the device and the negative human perception of facial obstructions.

Of course, anyone following Glass has to know about the public backlash to Glass. I just don't mean a handful of over-hyped incidents but the feeling you got when you were walking around with a Google Glass. To some extent, Google may have inadvertently set back heads-up wearables by a few years. Camera face is a bad idea for this decade.

Public Perception

Public perception seems to be that a heads-up wearable is a camera that is surreptitiously invading your privacy. The solution is to simply remove the camera from Glass or any heads-up wearable. It's a feature that consumers really don't need and its inclusion makes the product unmarketable. My smartphone takes better photos, and with Glass, I'm not in any photographs because I'm wearing the camera on my face. Imagine on a summer day, handing a stranger your Glass and saying, 'can you take a photo of us? Just put this crown on your sweaty head, tilt your head up 30 degrees in a fast motion, then say OK Glass, take a picture.'

The irony of Glass is that the one thing that worked reasonably well was also its biggest problem. It didn't help that it was the only feature of Glass seemingly marketed. The Google Glass page was filled with first-person photos and videos using Glass and not much else. This unfortunately is also why it's a pariah of a device because it swelled into privacy concerns and became one more reason for people to hate it in addition to the astronomical price, how it looks on a person, and the limitations of the device. I wouldn't have predicted that the camera on Glass would be its undoing but as a catalyst, I think that's exactly what happened. The makers of the next generation of heads-up wearables will be smart to not include a user-controlled camera at all.

For those who felt the privacy implications would eventually fade away in a world of Facebook and location-tracking apps, the missed concept is that of value exchange. The privacy value exchange in Facebook is access to a valuable social experience. The privacy value exchange in giving up your location on an app is to find nearby restaurants so you can get something to eat. These are personal decisions about privacy that offer you significant value in return. A non-Glass user is not making the decision and is not receiving value when someone enters their personal space wearing one.

The 3 Data Points that Killed Google Glass

I believe the Glass Explorer program experiment yielded three important data points. I'm purposely ignoring things that were obvious every day to Google, which are the high price and the short battery life.

The First One was Obvious to Everyone Before They Even Shipped a Single Pair. There is an aversion to wearing something on your head that looks out of place. There may even be evolutionary or sociological reasons why facial obstruction, as perceived by others, has such a profound effect. The next version of Glass must be invisible to the outside world, such as concealment within the structure of eyeglasses or the concepts being explored for contacts. Remember, one of the first trench warfare scenarios made them acceptable. By barely evolving the look of Glass over the duration of the Explorer program, they instead took the Bluetooth-earpiece-wearing-business-jerk phenomena to a whole new level.

The Second Data Point is that a camera has no place on a heads-up wearable. I'm not sure this was easily predicted. It seemed like a sensible feature, but I would expect smart wearable manufacturers to launch new heads-up wearables without a camera that records photos and videos. The exception might be a camera for image processing but one that lacks any user-initiated capture ability. Public trust must be won back. We're not ready for cameras strapped to our heads unless we're making an extreme snowboarding video.

The Third Data Point is About Human Interfaces. I'm sure there is a lot of feedback on how the stopgap compromise of using a touchpad on the side of the glass was unsustainable. It made it more difficult to use than a smartphone since you can't see your finger. As well, a flexed arm is extremely tiring. Still, I would shake the hands of the Glass engineers and product managers for many of the innovative attempts they made that didn't work out. Bone conduction for the audio was a great idea only to be rendered impractical in real-world conditions, resulting in the version 1.5 Google Glass shipping with an earbud.

He's Dead Jim

So, why is Google Glass dead? Quite simply because Glass needs to be taken back to formula. This experiment was crucial in the evolution of wearables. It will still have an impact as is in workplace fields like medicine, as alluded to in the Glass Google post. This makes sense since nearly all of the above isn't a concern to an open-heart surgeon. I think we'll all look back years from now and understand the influence of the first Glass program. What will emerge in heads-up wearables will be nothing like Glass and what emerges from Google will likely have a new name to distance itself from the program like Google was to Buzz. Nevertheless, Google Glass is dead. Long live Google Glass.