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It's easy to armchair quarterback this stuff after the fact, but this is where Glass should have started. The price point, social stigma/issues, and use cases

It's easy to armchair quarterback this stuff after the fact, but this is where Glass should have started. The price point, social stigma/issues, and use cases all screamed "business applications!". Consumer tech may be where the glamour and scale are, but it's not always the best market entry point.

lallysingh 9y ago
And the glamor. If you started on the manufacturing side, it wouldn't have any caché when walking down the street. But if you started with a bunch of models on a runway wearing these, you would. They tried going lux consumer and failed. But if they went the manufacturing route first, they would've burned any chance of the other.
- oliv__ 9y ago
  I don't agree. They could've used the manufacturing side to enhance the tech, get the components to a cheaper price point, maybe even slim down the whole thing and then when they felt ready to enter the consumer market, spin it off as something new under another consumer-only brand.
  - Hailie343 9y ago
    like Dawn replied I'm shocked that someone able to profit $8730 in a few weeks on the > internet . you can try this out>>>>>>>>>>>http://www.joinmate2.Com http://www.joinmate2.Com
  - abraae 9y ago
    Or they could have let someone else take all of the "glasshole" flak, then arrived after that with a trusted, safe, Google product that addressed the concerns. As they say, you can spot the pioneers because they're the ones with the arrows sticking out of their backs.
- rjsw 9y ago
  ITYM cachet, not caché.
AckSyn 9y ago
Many people said this on the initial run/introduction of Glass. Industrial applications are definitely where they should have started. I'm just glad they've made a comeback and will hopefully get broader use in the medical field and military as well.
enjo 9y ago
Wasn't that the point tho? Basically Google went: "We have this cool thing, but we're not sure were it's most applicable. Lets just put it out in the world and see what people do with it!" Which is what they did. The data they gained from that experiment no doubt led to this.
- objclxt 9y ago
  That's what they did after it was clear it was done as a piece of consumer hardware. It's easy to forget how hard Google pushed Glass to consumers. They parachuted people out of a helicopter onto the roof of the Moscone Center wearing them. They invested a vast amount of money building out massive floating barges to use as showrooms, which they quietly mothballed and sold. They allowed Robert Scoble to take a picture of himself in the shower with one (some might say this was the worst crime of all). If Google wanted to "just put it out in the world" they wouldn't have invested so much money in their consumer push. Now that I think about it, that Google I/O in 2012 was a bit of a disaster all around for consumer hardware, because it had both the Glass and the Nexus Q. At least Glass actually shipped.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Promoting it to a room full of developers is not a "big push to consumers". Robert Scoble is not really a consumer tech reporter either. He's more like a futurist. Most of the things he likes to talk about are things you can't buy. Maybe because you got marketed to you are thinking it was consumer marketing, but consider that you were being marketed to as a developer not a consumer.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      They were marketing to developers, but they were marketing it as something that would be useful for consumer applications. They've admitted that that was a mistake, at least in the state Glass was in when it was introduced.
    - acdha 9y ago
      If you followed the news at the time there was a ton of coverage in mainstream media with bold claims about how society was going to be transformed and it was way outside of just developer circles. For example, the New Yorker is not typically considered a developer site and yet they have a bunch of articles like http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/glass-before-google http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/glass-before-google and http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/05/o-k-glass http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/05/o-k-glass. Similarly: http://www.vogue.com/article/the-final-frontier-google-glass-and-futuristic-fashion http://www.vogue.com/article/the-final-frontier-google-glass... http://www.vogue.com/article/fka-twigs-throughglass-google-glass-film http://www.vogue.com/article/fka-twigs-throughglass-google-g... https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/technology/biggest-eyewear-company-signs-on-with-google-glass.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/technology/biggest-eyewea...
33W 9y ago
I agree that this is the better starting market for Glass. I think they saw the difference between Apple and Blackberry and believed that penetrating the consumer market first would drive demand within the business market.
ryanobjc 9y ago
Except you don't really know that. Hindsight 20/20 means that the current place seems inevitable. Here's an alternate future: - People were initially apprehensive of the high price, but a small dedicated fan base bought it up - Shortly after launch, Google drops the price by a $200 - People deride it's feature set, commenting on the things it "should" have included - Despite that, the interface is very good - A year later, the next version is released, fixing all the missing problems people complained about - The item becomes a must-have tech, front page of Wired articles are written about it, etc, etc
- Infernal 9y ago
  Were you intentionally drawing parallels to the iPhone here?
- valuearb 9y ago
  The difference is the original iPhone was actually useful for things people actually wanted to do, and reasonably priced for those uses. They sold 1M units in the first quarter, making it one of the most popular phones in the world at launch. Apple spent many years creating the iphone. First they created a tablet computer, Jobs rejected it as not ready, not good enough. They then built a phone based on ipod touch wheel. Jobs rejected it as not good enough. He let the tablet team try to build a phone and eventually after much work and improvements, finally shipped it because it actually worked well for consumers, and could do many things consumers wanted (phone, texts, music, web, etc) Google got glass working and said, what's will consumers use it for? We don't know, so let's dump prototypes on developers and have them figure it out! Eventually some company, probably Apple, will build something like Glass that consumers will want, but it won't be Google. They don't get consumers (except for high functioning types) and their product development/approval process is a mess.
spinlock 9y ago
Ha! I interviewed at google and told them glass was a horrible consumer product and that they should have started with a market that wouldn't mind looking stupid (or skiers who already wore goggles so they wouldn't look stupid at all). The point I made to them was that they engineered an incredible device but hadn't validated the market. I suggested it would have been better to start with something like skiers because they already wore goggles and helmets. So, you wouldn't need to get the product so small to see how people reacted to it. Needless to say, I didn't get the job. It was really funny to watch Glass (which is a cool technology) totally fail because it's a stupid consumer product. And, I'm no Steve Jobs. It was absolutely predictable that Glass would never work as a consumer product. And, if you want to make it work for manufacturing, I think you'll need to scale up the form factor. Why wouldn't you make it a safety goggle too? Think about all of the engineering effort that went into shrinking this into a small, completely impractical, package. Anyway, I think that this was not only predictable but it also shows a company culture where people can't tell the emperor that he's naked. It's not like I was the only person that took one look at glass and knew you couldn't leave the house wearing one. But, that message was pretty actively suppressed at Google.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- valuearb 9y ago
  Not sure why you got down-voted, everything you wrote is true.
  - Gigablah 9y ago
    Except for the parts where he claimed that his opinions were the reason for him failing the interview, or the fact that he failed the interview was indicative of some company culture. Unless you believe that he's an omniscient psychic who somehow has insider knowledge of his hiring process.
    - sbank 9y ago
      Or maybe it was just said in jest. Not everything has to be so black and white.
mirimir 9y ago
Yeah. I really don't get why they focused on its gargoyle feature, which (rightly so) raised serious concerns about privacy, and downplayed AR. The obvious target market, other than geeks, would have been bikers. They'd find both gargoyle and AR very useful for swarm coordination. And military, of course. Perfect for infantry. But that's probably in quiet development.
- Zak 9y ago
  > which (rightly so) raised serious concerns about privacy I always thought the privacy concerns were overblown: If it's about users surreptitiously recording others, wearing the really conspicuous gadget known to contain a camera on your head is a really ineffectual way to do that. A smartphone in a shirt pocket would be better, and surveillance devices intended to be concealed better (and cheaper) still. If it's about Google or app makers getting recordings, that doesn't seem nearly as bad as the various always-listening voice recognition tech in popular use today. Perhaps it might if people were wearing them 24/7, but they don't have the battery life for that.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Overblown or not, they were there. I do agree that ubiquitous smartphones are just as bad.
  - Sharlin 9y ago
    It was never about secretly taking photos. It was all about having an obvious contraption on your head that might not be recording or not. That makes people a) uncomfortable and b) conclude that you either don't care or just lack the social skills to realize that. It's not like recording secretly with a concealed cellphone, it's like overtly aiming your cellphone camera at someone while interacting with them, whether it's actually recording or not. One might argue that people should get used to that, and at some point they probably will, but turns out it's a somewhat more difficult task trying to adapt people to your product than vice versa.
    - Zak 9y ago
GenericsMotors 9y ago
On the few rare occasions I saw someone wearing Google's specs, the first thought that crossed my mind was "douchebag glasses" :|
stuart78 9y ago
I agree in principle, but I would personally never return to a doctor who had one of these things on their face (like the one in the article photo). I see all the use cases for field operators, but it remains (to me) as creepy in any interpersonal setting as it did with the consumer launch.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Steko 9y ago
> this is where Glass should have started. The price point, social stigma/issues, and use cases all screamed "business applications!". You've put the cart before the horse. The price point is not fixed. You don't make something and then look around for a convenient market. Google glass was also designed backwards, they maximized screen quality and watched it fail in the market due to high price and shit battery life when what they should have done is designed up from a 12+ hour battery life.

lallysingh 9y ago

And the glamor. If you started on the manufacturing side, it wouldn't have any caché when walking down the street. But if you started with a bunch of models on a runway wearing these, you would. They tried going lux consumer and failed. But if they went the manufacturing route first, they would've burned any chance of the other.

oliv__ 9y ago
I don't agree. They could've used the manufacturing side to enhance the tech, get the components to a cheaper price point, maybe even slim down the whole thing and then when they felt ready to enter the consumer market, spin it off as something new under another consumer-only brand.
- Hailie343 9y ago
  like Dawn replied I'm shocked that someone able to profit $8730 in a few weeks on the > internet . you can try this out>>>>>>>>>>>http://www.joinmate2.Com http://www.joinmate2.Com
- abraae 9y ago
  Or they could have let someone else take all of the "glasshole" flak, then arrived after that with a trusted, safe, Google product that addressed the concerns. As they say, you can spot the pioneers because they're the ones with the arrows sticking out of their backs.
rjsw 9y ago
ITYM cachet, not caché.

AckSyn 9y ago

Many people said this on the initial run/introduction of Glass. Industrial applications are definitely where they should have started. I'm just glad they've made a comeback and will hopefully get broader use in the medical field and military as well.

enjo 9y ago

Wasn't that the point tho? Basically Google went: "We have this cool thing, but we're not sure were it's most applicable. Lets just put it out in the world and see what people do with it!" Which is what they did. The data they gained from that experiment no doubt led to this.

objclxt 9y ago
That's what they did after it was clear it was done as a piece of consumer hardware. It's easy to forget how hard Google pushed Glass to consumers. They parachuted people out of a helicopter onto the roof of the Moscone Center wearing them. They invested a vast amount of money building out massive floating barges to use as showrooms, which they quietly mothballed and sold. They allowed Robert Scoble to take a picture of himself in the shower with one (some might say this was the worst crime of all). If Google wanted to "just put it out in the world" they wouldn't have invested so much money in their consumer push. Now that I think about it, that Google I/O in 2012 was a bit of a disaster all around for consumer hardware, because it had both the Glass and the Nexus Q. At least Glass actually shipped.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Promoting it to a room full of developers is not a "big push to consumers". Robert Scoble is not really a consumer tech reporter either. He's more like a futurist. Most of the things he likes to talk about are things you can't buy. Maybe because you got marketed to you are thinking it was consumer marketing, but consider that you were being marketed to as a developer not a consumer.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    They were marketing to developers, but they were marketing it as something that would be useful for consumer applications. They've admitted that that was a mistake, at least in the state Glass was in when it was introduced.
  - acdha 9y ago
    If you followed the news at the time there was a ton of coverage in mainstream media with bold claims about how society was going to be transformed and it was way outside of just developer circles. For example, the New Yorker is not typically considered a developer site and yet they have a bunch of articles like http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/glass-before-google http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/glass-before-google and http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/05/o-k-glass http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/05/o-k-glass. Similarly: http://www.vogue.com/article/the-final-frontier-google-glass-and-futuristic-fashion http://www.vogue.com/article/the-final-frontier-google-glass... http://www.vogue.com/article/fka-twigs-throughglass-google-glass-film http://www.vogue.com/article/fka-twigs-throughglass-google-g... https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/technology/biggest-eyewear-company-signs-on-with-google-glass.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/technology/biggest-eyewea...

33W 9y ago

I agree that this is the better starting market for Glass. I think they saw the difference between Apple and Blackberry and believed that penetrating the consumer market first would drive demand within the business market.

ryanobjc 9y ago

Except you don't really know that. Hindsight 20/20 means that the current place seems inevitable. Here's an alternate future: - People were initially apprehensive of the high price, but a small dedicated fan base bought it up - Shortly after launch, Google drops the price by a $200 - People deride it's feature set, commenting on the things it "should" have included - Despite that, the interface is very good - A year later, the next version is released, fixing all the missing problems people complained about - The item becomes a must-have tech, front page of Wired articles are written about it, etc, etc

Infernal 9y ago
Were you intentionally drawing parallels to the iPhone here?
valuearb 9y ago
The difference is the original iPhone was actually useful for things people actually wanted to do, and reasonably priced for those uses. They sold 1M units in the first quarter, making it one of the most popular phones in the world at launch. Apple spent many years creating the iphone. First they created a tablet computer, Jobs rejected it as not ready, not good enough. They then built a phone based on ipod touch wheel. Jobs rejected it as not good enough. He let the tablet team try to build a phone and eventually after much work and improvements, finally shipped it because it actually worked well for consumers, and could do many things consumers wanted (phone, texts, music, web, etc) Google got glass working and said, what's will consumers use it for? We don't know, so let's dump prototypes on developers and have them figure it out! Eventually some company, probably Apple, will build something like Glass that consumers will want, but it won't be Google. They don't get consumers (except for high functioning types) and their product development/approval process is a mess.

spinlock 9y ago

Ha! I interviewed at google and told them glass was a horrible consumer product and that they should have started with a market that wouldn't mind looking stupid (or skiers who already wore goggles so they wouldn't look stupid at all). The point I made to them was that they engineered an incredible device but hadn't validated the market. I suggested it would have been better to start with something like skiers because they already wore goggles and helmets. So, you wouldn't need to get the product so small to see how people reacted to it. Needless to say, I didn't get the job. It was really funny to watch Glass (which is a cool technology) totally fail because it's a stupid consumer product. And, I'm no Steve Jobs. It was absolutely predictable that Glass would never work as a consumer product. And, if you want to make it work for manufacturing, I think you'll need to scale up the form factor. Why wouldn't you make it a safety goggle too? Think about all of the engineering effort that went into shrinking this into a small, completely impractical, package. Anyway, I think that this was not only predictable but it also shows a company culture where people can't tell the emperor that he's naked. It's not like I was the only person that took one look at glass and knew you couldn't leave the house wearing one. But, that message was pretty actively suppressed at Google.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
valuearb 9y ago
Not sure why you got down-voted, everything you wrote is true.
- Gigablah 9y ago
  Except for the parts where he claimed that his opinions were the reason for him failing the interview, or the fact that he failed the interview was indicative of some company culture. Unless you believe that he's an omniscient psychic who somehow has insider knowledge of his hiring process.
  - sbank 9y ago
    Or maybe it was just said in jest. Not everything has to be so black and white.

mirimir 9y ago

Yeah. I really don't get why they focused on its gargoyle feature, which (rightly so) raised serious concerns about privacy, and downplayed AR. The obvious target market, other than geeks, would have been bikers. They'd find both gargoyle and AR very useful for swarm coordination. And military, of course. Perfect for infantry. But that's probably in quiet development.

Zak 9y ago
> which (rightly so) raised serious concerns about privacy I always thought the privacy concerns were overblown: If it's about users surreptitiously recording others, wearing the really conspicuous gadget known to contain a camera on your head is a really ineffectual way to do that. A smartphone in a shirt pocket would be better, and surveillance devices intended to be concealed better (and cheaper) still. If it's about Google or app makers getting recordings, that doesn't seem nearly as bad as the various always-listening voice recognition tech in popular use today. Perhaps it might if people were wearing them 24/7, but they don't have the battery life for that.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Overblown or not, they were there. I do agree that ubiquitous smartphones are just as bad.
- Sharlin 9y ago
  It was never about secretly taking photos. It was all about having an obvious contraption on your head that might not be recording or not. That makes people a) uncomfortable and b) conclude that you either don't care or just lack the social skills to realize that. It's not like recording secretly with a concealed cellphone, it's like overtly aiming your cellphone camera at someone while interacting with them, whether it's actually recording or not. One might argue that people should get used to that, and at some point they probably will, but turns out it's a somewhat more difficult task trying to adapt people to your product than vice versa.
  - Zak 9y ago

GenericsMotors 9y ago

On the few rare occasions I saw someone wearing Google's specs, the first thought that crossed my mind was "douchebag glasses" :|

stuart78 9y ago

I agree in principle, but I would personally never return to a doctor who had one of these things on their face (like the one in the article photo). I see all the use cases for field operators, but it remains (to me) as creepy in any interpersonal setting as it did with the consumer launch.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Steko 9y ago

> this is where Glass should have started. The price point, social stigma/issues, and use cases all screamed "business applications!". You've put the cart before the horse. The price point is not fixed. You don't make something and then look around for a convenient market. Google glass was also designed backwards, they maximized screen quality and watched it fail in the market due to high price and shit battery life when what they should have done is designed up from a 12+ hour battery life.