Google Top Exec: Glass Eyewear Isn’t Dead, It’s Just Getting Started
In January, Google (GOOG) stopped selling its Glass eyewear technology to consumers and closed the Explorer program in which thousands of beta testers paid upwards of $1,500 to sample the wearable device.
The move was widely reported as Google abandoning Glass, an understandable conclusion given the market’s tepid response to the device and the absence of clear market demand. But Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal the media got it all wrong.
“[Glass] is a big and very fundamental platform for Google,” Schmidt said. “We ended the Explorer program and the press conflated this into us canceling the whole project, which isn’t true. Google is about taking risks and there’s nothing about adjusting Glass that suggests we’re ending it.”
Glass, he said, is similar to Google’s self-driving car project in that the vendor views it in the long-term.
“That’s like saying the self-driving car is a disappointment because it’s not driving me around now,” he said. “These things take time.”
What Google’s done is put Glass back under the microscope to “make it ready for users,” Schmidt told the Journal, which reported earlier this year that the vendor is working on a new, less expensive version of Glass sporting longer battery life, with better sound and an upgraded display.
The Glass project still is being led by Ivy Ross but has been relocated from the Google X research lab of its origin and moved under the direction of Tony Fadell, the co-founder and chief executive of home automation developer Nest, which Google acquired for $3.2 billion a year ago.
At this point, it’s not clear what changes Fadell will make to Glass to make it more consumer friendly.
Glass, which features a processor, camera and small screen affixed to an eyeglass frame, boasts a number of important distribution agreements, most prominently with Luxottica, which owns Oakley and Ray Ban, and vision care provider VSP Global. Those deals were designed to blunt the impression that Glass is a niche product only for techies.
In addition, Intel (INTC) signed on to replace Texas Instruments’ (TI) chips in the next round of Glass devices.
Prior to shuttering the Explorer program, Google suffered some serious defections from the Glass ranks. Last July, Babak Parviz, who headed development of Google’s Glass project and has been with the company since 2010, jumped ship to Amazon (AMZN). Adrian Wong, electrical engineering head, and Ossama Alami, director of developer relations director, also left.
And, the Glass Collective, a partnership between Google Ventures and venture firms Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers to catalyze a developer ecosystem for Glass, fell apart.
Still, Google remains interested in the wearables market, a segment researcher IDC projects to reach 112 million device shipments by 2018. In January, Google invested some $24.8 million in Vuzix (VUZI), a 17-year old Rochester, N.Y.-based virtual reality and smart glasses maker, buying a 30 percent stake in the company and diving a bit deeper into the wearables space.
