Google is one of the most successful tech companies in the world, some recent ratings have put it as number two behind Apple. It has attained this status by generally experimenting on ideas, and while most of them often succeed and propel the company forward, some have been known to fail. It seems that Google Glass is destined for failure if reports and trends are anything to believe.
When Glass was announced sometime in 2012, it was a novel idea, the future of computing and everyone could not wait to experiment with this wearable computer. However, a few years down the line and it seems the enthusiasm has slowly worn down and virtually nobody is talking about the device anymore.
Even though Google is still adamant that the tech is still viable, it has closed up some of the incubation camps and campuses or centres that were specifically set up for research into Glass. Even companies that were developing their apps for Glass, such as Twitter, have abandoned such ventures as they have noted that the tech probably won’t pick up anyway. In fact, even Google Glass’s pioneering personalities such as Babak Parviz have left the company and joined Amazon instead.
Moreover, developers have continually felt that the Google Glass platform is not significant enough to spend considerable time trying to develop apps and content, and this has also led to increased difficulty in making Glass a commercially available commodity. Additionally, cost has also been a major issue with Glass as the Explorer Edition started off with a base price of around $1500, which is not cheap by any standards.
The troubles of Glass don’t stop there, as the technology has had to battle privacy concerns as it is viewed as infringing on people’s privacy by being a part of their everyday activities. This has led to Glass being banned in various establishments especially movie theatres.
Google Glass has also been a victim of rare instances where individuals who wear them are ridiculed and discriminated against to levels that involve even slight violence. As strange as it may sound there have been instances where people wearing Google Glass are openly humiliated to such an extent that they finally decide never to put on the wearable again. Finally, Google Glass has lost some enthusiasm to more immediate wearable tech such as Watch and VR sets such as Oculus’ Rift and Samsung’s Galaxy VR.
These virtual reality sets are generally seen as being much more welcome in the current society than Google Glass, hence their higher popularity. All these signs point towards a failed device, and if it indeed fails, it will be yet another device in the list that currently contains the likes of Google Wave, Google Nexus Q, Google X, Google Lively, and even Google Answers. But we should not dismiss it just yet, there are already rumours that Google Glass will appear next year with Intel powered hardware, and this could lead to better processing power and subsequently better battery life, but that is story for another day. As for now it suffices to say that with proper awareness campaigns and implementation, Google Glass can still be revived. All we can do is wait and see the next course of action that Google will take with its Glass.
