“Many developers and early Google Glass users are losing interest in the much-hyped, $1,500 test version of the product: a camera, processor and stamp-sized computer screen mounted to the edge of eyeglass frames. Google Inc itself has pushed back the Glass roll out to the mass market,” Alexei Oreskovic, Sarah McBride and Malathi Nayak report for Reuters. “While Glass may find some specialized, even lucrative, uses in the workplace, its prospects of becoming a consumer hit in the near future are slim, many developers say.”
“Of 16 Glass app makers contacted by Reuters, nine said that they had stopped work on their projects or abandoned them, mostly because of the lack of customers or limitations of the device. Three more have switched to developing for business, leaving behind consumer projects,” Oreskovic, McBride and Nayak report. “Several key Google employees instrumental to developing Glass have left the company in the last six months, including lead developer Babak Parviz, electrical engineering chief Adrian Wong, and Ossama Alami, director of developer relations.”
“And a Glass funding consortium created by Google Ventures and two of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture capitalists, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Andreessen Horowitz, quietly deleted its website, routing users to the main Glass site,” Oreskovic, McBride and Nayak report. “Google dubbed the first set of several thousand Glass users as “Explorers.” But as the Explorers hit the streets, they drew stares and jokes. Some people viewed the device, capable of surreptitious video recording, as an obnoxious privacy intrusion, deriding the once-proud Explorers as ‘Glassholes.’ ‘It looks super nerdy,’ said Shevetank Shah, a Washington, DC-based consultant, whose Google Glass now gathers dust in a drawer. ‘I’m a card carrying nerd, but this was one card too many.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Chalk up yet another stillbirth for Our Lady of Perpetual Beta.
But hey, according to the brilliant minds at Fortune, this is exactly sort of “success” that earns you “Businessperson of the Year,” so, if that sort of pap floats your boat, keep doing what you’re doing Sergey and Larry (while Tim Cook’s Apple, the world’ most valuable company by far, rakes in the vast majority of the world’s smartphone profits, takes over the mobile payments industry, leads in mobile processor design, grabs personal computing marketshare, revolutionizes the enterprise, dominates tablet usage, prepares to launch Apple Watch, etc., etc., etc.)
Related articles:
The revolt against Google ‘glassholes’ – July 15, 2014
Watch The Daily Show totally destroy Google Glass users – June 13, 2014
Google Glass detector app cuts off Wi-Fi for glassholes – June 4, 2014
Harvard prof on Google Glass: ‘We shouldn’t accept these devices as inevitable’ – May 19, 2014
CNBC’s Najarian: I had Google Glass for two weeks, but sent it back because ‘the product stunk’ – May 2, 2014
Warning: Glassholes to storm cities and towns across America this Saturday – May 2, 2014
My awkward week with Google Glass – April 30, 2014
Through a Google Glass, darkly; surveillance of, by, and for the people – April 18, 2014
Spyware app can secretly take photos from Google Glass without user’s knowledge – March 26, 2014
Google Glass-wearing woman claims attack at San Francisco bar – February 26, 2014
Scoble: Google Glass is doomed – January 2, 2014
One year wearing Google Glass: ‘Look at that asshole’ – December 31, 2013
Why an Apple iWatch has better chances than Google Glass – November 6, 2013
Apple’s Siri lambastes Google Glass – August 26, 2013
Google Glass ban list grows; top 10 places banning Google Glass – August 7, 2013
[sniff] Gee, thats too bad. Glassholes had such a promising future.
Yeah, always making spectacles of themselves.
LOL
Say it ain’t so. Damn. Disappointed. Now I may never get a chance to punch one of those glassholes the face.
Me too. That was number one on my bucket list.
I’ll have to put away my laser pointer for another day…
It was a STUPID POS and those so called BS Journalist fawning all over it looks like a bunch of FOOLS right now! LOL
It was an interesting idea. I give Google credit for giving it a try. I’m sure they learned a few things along the way.
You mean like ideas might seem interesting, intriguing even in a nerd’s mind, but the reality is usually shit if you fail to think through the problem of promising a banquet and delivering a dogs dinner.
I’m maniacal about doing R&D. But large scale public alpha testing of potential products for the sake of hyping the stock is ridiculous. How many similar projects are piled up an Apple, never to see the light of day, and that’s the way it should be?
Google: Hype yourself on actual, successful accomplishments that the public wants, that last in the marketplace? Can you do that please? As opposed to this Here Today, Gone Tomorrow rubbish?
They still make those?!?!?
Who’s buying them?
Where’s that Dracula-Azzhole to explain why we’re all idiots for not soldering arduinos to our phones with self-made sugru cables to effect this fantastic technology?
google gave tens of thousands of pairs to developers for free and it still didn’t help. There isn’t one left still wearing them and most are now on ebay.
I can’t wait to see people wearing them ironically. Google Glass will be the new hipster accessory when everyone in the world is wearing an Apple Watch.
My guess is that the average Glasshole was a hipster attention whore. Once the novelty, and thus the attention, wore off, they were left with only the Glass itself, which isn’t really that useful.
——RM
Bummer… It was such a fantastic excuse to beat those glassholes.
The end of a spectacle.
Sorry but I can’t celebrate this. I worry that the Google mad scientists will go underground, manufacturing inconspicuous low-cost versions of this spy technology, persisting in their belief that it can somehow serve their ad-driven business model. I shudder to think how.
Google flotsam and jetsam piles up on the beach. And people are noticing. So maybe the hyped up stock price can now correct itself into the realm of the sane and realistic.