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Google offers refunds after smart glasses stop working
- aspenmayer 6y agoWow, this seems extreme... not in keeping with the First Sale Doctrine. > At the end of June, North announced it was being acquired by Google, and would not release a planned second-generation device. It also said it would "wind down" its first generation smart glasses, released last year. > Customers found out that meant the smart glasses would be rendered "dumb" through a statement published on the company's website[1] and by email. [1] https://support.bynorth.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045128691-Winding-down-Focals https://support.bynorth.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045128691-W...
- oh_sigh 6y agoI doubt it is being rendered dumb by, say, putting a different firmware on it. It probably just absolutely needs occasional or constant internet connectivity to their servers to work, and Google is shutting them down.
- elcomet 6y agoYeah, they're turning the brain off. So they are dumbing them down.
- aspenmayer 6y agoDo you know of alternate firmware for smart glasses? I’ve done some firmware patching before, but in the very much tool assisted way. I’m kind of bristling with anticipation with what could be possible with access to the firmware. Do you know much about these particular AR glasses, what software they could run, and how firmware could help? Other than keeping them from being bricked, I mean.
- jjcon 6y ago> not in keeping with the First Sale Doctrine. I’m confused - what does this have to do with first sale?
- joecot 6y agoFrom Wikipedia: > The first-sale doctrine is a legal concept that plays an important role in United States patent, copyright and trademark law by limiting the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property. That means I should be able to sell my glasses to someone without the original creator causing problems with it. It's more complicated than that, but that's the gist. If I bought these glasses and they shut down the service and refund me, fine, whatever. But what if I bought the glasses, decided 4 months later I didn't like them, sold them on Craigslist for $600, and moved on with my life? After the shut down I get $800 back, and the poor sap who bought them from me gets a pair of worthless glasses and a dead craigslist email. Luckily this company will most likely get away with it because of the "it's more complicated than that" part.
- jjcon 6y agoFirst sale only applies to the goods - it does in no way (or in any country) apply to services. It certainly does not require a company to offer a service for free in perpetuity. You can still sell the glasses, first sale allows that. It doesn’t say they must maintain their value. There may be a false advertising case or fraud case here I’m not sure - but this has nothing to do with first sale.
- aspenmayer 6y agoRemote bricking of a device I own without my knowledge AND consent is legally actionable if I know where to send the certified letter from my lawyer. In this case, I do.
- jjcon 6y agoLiterally everything CAN be legally actionable. Unless it was previously explicitly agreed upon, a company can turn off a costly service they are providing at their will. Did you have an explicit agreement arranged? Again though... this has nothing to do with first sale.
- 6y ago
- nikanj 6y agoSucks for people who bought second-hand glasses
- oh_sigh 6y agoIs there any legal obligation Google has to 2nd hand owners of these glasses, or is it just a kind gesture that they're refunding everyone? I have to wonder what kind of secret sauce north had if they refund 100% of the revenue from the company after acquiring....unless they only sold a few units and this was just an acquihire
- easton 6y agoGoogle probably calculated it into the sale price. It's probably worth it to drop North's customer base vs have to deal with the glasses, sales and support for the next couple years (especially if they have to write bug fixes over time for these glasses).
- jsnell 6y agoThe HN discussion from when the sale was announced [0] might be of interest. It definitely didn't sound like a company being bought for the product, and might not even have been an acquihire. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23690967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23690967
- 908B64B197 6y agoIt was a patent acquisition. North had originally purchased patents from Intel when they abandoned their Vaunt project. [0]. From what I've been told the reason they are shutting down the existing glasses is because they won't be hiring from the company. The founders were also not hired as part of the deal. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/19/intel-abandons-vaunt-smart-glasses-project/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/19/intel-abandons-vaunt-smart...
- mrighele 6y agoIf their second hand product is still under warranty I think they are entitled to a refund, since their glasses don't work anymore they are clearly defective.
- adrianmonk 6y agoOdd use of the word "after" in the BBC News article's headline. According to the official announcement (https://support.bynorth.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045128691-Winding-down-Focals https://support.bynorth.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045128691-W...), the refunds started June 30th and the glasses will stop working July 31st. So in this case, "after" means "one month before". --- Incidentally, there is an issue of ambiguous/confusing phrasing in the official announcement. It says "refunds will be given for all paid Focals orders starting June 30th, 2020". This could be interpreted to mean (1) that orders before June 30th will never be refunded or (2) that all orders will be refunded and the process will start on June 30th. However, the comments on a Reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/focals/comments/hjvgol/focals_refund_info_page/ https://www.reddit.com/r/focals/comments/hjvgol/focals_refun...) show older orders were refunded and refunds started happening shortly after June 30th, so interpretation #2 looks correct.
- calcifer 6y ago> Odd use of the word "after" in the BBC News article's headline. It's not odd, the word simply has multiple meanings. Here it means in accordance with, not subsequent. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/after https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/after
- Apocryphon 6y agoYet another incredible journey ends in the Google graveyard.
- hu3 6y agoThat's quite unfortunate. At least Google Glasses are still going strong in the enterprise sector and it's great! https://youtu.be/habz0xdysoM?t=126 https://youtu.be/habz0xdysoM?t=126
- myko 6y agoThat's Google Glass, an entirely different product. The glasses that are being discontinued / refunded are from a startup "North" which Google recently purchased.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- AmericanChopper 6y agoTo be fair, North was going down the drain whether Google purchased them or not. Goog clearly just saw some assets that they thought were worth acquiring.
- code4tee 6y agoAt least they’re issuing the refunds. Have bought products from other startups that went bust and they just send an email saying their product won’t work after X date, have a nice day.
- peterkelly 6y agoIt's good they're providing refunds, but the decision to shut down whatever service the glasses relied on in an excellent way to demonstrate "When you buy a product from us, you can't trust that it's going for any given period of time, and we'll just brick it when we get bored of it". Google of course is famous for doing this with many of its products, but in the long run this type of behavior can make it harder for startups to introduce new products/services. Some customers will ask the question "So what happens when you get acqui-hired in a year and your parent company decides to shut down your service either immediately, or a year after they tell customers that everything will continue unchanged?" Of course the bigger lesson here is don't buy products which rely on a third-party service to function.
- dorkinspace 6y agoStories like this are why I will never buy a product like Stadia from Google. There is zero guarantee the product and games purchased on the platform will be usable next month (exaggerating a bit) or next year. This extends to all things Google. When building a new product, I push hard to use any alternative to Google because the future of their products is so uncertain. Sure, there are a few Google products that can be reasonably relied upon, but that list is small.
- myko 6y agoI'm a big fan of Stadia but really can't argue against this thought process. It would be nice if Google had some way of marking products that were potentially going to be cancelled vs those that have passed the threshold and will not go away unless Google is in danger of going away completely. Reader really looks like the breaking of a dam in hindsight.
- MengerSponge 6y ago'member when Google threw away their innovative social network in order to break the "+" boolean search operator?
- Osiris 6y ago
- neallindsay 6y agoThis is a very misleading title.
- arprocter 6y agoYeah, "stop working" implies the glasses broke due to a glitch They are pulling the plug
- rootusrootus 6y agoAlong with IoT devices, I think this is an area we need to see more clarity and maybe regulation. When you buy a device that relies on a remote service, then there should be a very upfront guarantee on how long it will work. Then the customer can factor that information into how much they are willing to pay.
- lrnStats 6y agoYou don't need to get the government involved. That destroys small business. You can simply put a guaranteed to last/warranty timer on it. Heck when we were doing our IOT device we left an offline mode.
- plorntus 6y agoForgive my ignorance on the subject but if it's not government mandated then what's stopping them from going bankrupt and not respecting the guarantee? If they set aside no money to keep the promise then they physically cannot do anything about it when they run out of cash to keep the external services running.
- lrnStats 6y agoSure bankruptcy exists, but that doesn't apply to big companies. Not sure a regulation can even fix that.
- plorntus 6y agoTrue, big companies would be able to continue the guarantee but if all companies are not forced to set aside some 'contingency' money in the event of failure to keep the services running would you trust them to keep their end of the bargain? Would that not hurt the smaller companies more since you'd be less likely to purchase from them as theres nothing in place to say they must keep their promises? Edit: Not saying it shouldn't be an option not to provide the guarantee, just maybe there should be something saying if they do provide it then they must keep their end of the deal in the event of bankruptcy
- aarpmcgee 6y agoWhat about the waste in natural resources to nonchalantly brick a bunch of devices? Google is responsible for this.
- plorntus 6y agoNot standing up for Google here as they've done this many times. However that being said I feel like there must be a better way of providing these sort of devices that depend on an external service so they can keep running. I think in these cases there should be some sort of software 'escrow' type deal where in the event of them shutting down the companies that purchased them can go for full refund or the option of a partial refund but with the source code of the external services required to keep them fully operational. So if someone has built their model around a particular piece of tech they can continue operating until they have a proper solution to replace them. Edit: Just realised I may have mistook these devices for those that are used by companies that provide training for specialist equipment (eg. Hololens). So my response was sort of company centric, not sure what a good solution is for ordinary consumer devices as I guess you can't expect people to run their own server just for the 'smart' features.
- smabie 6y agoIn your opinion, how long should Google run the cloud infra for these glasses to work?
- traverseda 6y agoAnyone got a pair they want to sell cheap? There's some interesting hardware and it would be fun to do a teardown.
- dyingkneepad 6y agoSo they managed to kill Google Reader twice?
- dghughes 6y agoIt would be like buying a TV and your cable subscription runs our making the TV useless. Even though the hardware is OK it's the back end that failed not the hardware.
- lrnStats 6y agoI've been BamboGoogled Enough to be done with this company. On one hand Google is the lesser evil between M$ and Apple. But they are not reliable. Not sure if anything in tech is really good long term unless you DIY. Not sure how I can DIY a phone in any reliable or secure way.
- badRNG 6y ago> On one hand Google is the lesser evil between M$ and Apple. While I acknowledge this is certainly a highly subjective perspective, it is rare that I hear of Google being "less evil" than Apple. What either redeems Google or condemns Apple in your point of view?
- sm4rk0 6y agoI don't share Mr Wood's point of view: "But not all people who invest in startups will be that lucky." He's downplaying the bad news. I'd still be mad if this happened to me, even with full refund.
- Animats 6y ago"The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." Perhaps this will be brought up in the current antitrust hearings. Buying a competitor and shutting them down is often viewed as restraint of trade.
- monksy 6y agoIt looks like there were alternatives that were being created, which is pretty awesome. https://www.slant.co/options/5650/alternatives/~google-glass-alternatives https://www.slant.co/options/5650/alternatives/~google-glass... Shame we'll never see specialized apps that show off it's uniqueness. (Most applications are built towards phones and watches, tablets, and other equipment is considered to be a much more limited interface)
- mips_avatar 6y agoWith the cloud as the middleware for smart-device syncing, there should be more user control and ownership of the service.
- hedora 6y agoThe AGPL is designed to guarantee that end users can stand up their own cloud services. Maybe after enough nerds get bitten by IoT, some will band together and build compelling AGPL infrastructure to support future products. Most of these things are just a standard dumb device with a standard SoC wired in. I imagine there are plenty of smaller product integrators that just want to sell a widget and don’t care about software differentiation. This is what happened in the 80’s and 90’s with PC clones. It only takes a slip up (like the PC BIOS and DOS) from one incumbent player, and then the consumers will win.
- cargo8 6y agoIt's really odd that this is making the media rounds now, granted this is the most fair headline I've seen on it to date. The fact that Focals v2 were being cancelled, and that all customers would receive refunds for their existing purchase was announced with the acquisition months ago...
- mensetmanusman 6y agoElectronic goods disappearing and turning into money piles. Wish this happened to everything after a couple years.
- musingsole 6y agoI've followed North since they were Thalmic Labs manufacturing the Myo armband. They seemed to have good ideas but no real way to create the ecosystem a new device needs to actually be useful. The myo was super fun and I dreamt about what I could do with it...but never got around to making anything. It seems the rest of the ecosystem didn't either. So, now Myo and North glasses go down the drain... At least I can still play with my Myo's whenever the mood takes me.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago"But not all people who invest in startups will be that lucky." Purchasing a widget from a company is not investing. Cut the bullshit. Customers don't have the commensurate upside. It's kind of wild that Google is pulling this kind of shit when they are getting grilled about whether the us should take a more expansive view of antitrust. They ruined an independent product because they wanted the people that made it to work on their shit instead.
- kraig911 6y agoOnly fools trust google at this point. It's just not worth it to ever at all invest in anything esp GCP. I look at my past investments of time and energy and tell literally EVERYONE I KNOW to look elsewhere.
- gerash 6y agowhat are you talking about? how is gcp even relevant here? Apple acquired a weather app (DarkSky) and promptly killed their Android app. Do you, based on your logic, think someone who was planning to buy an ipad is now going to think twice?
- Tepix 6y agoSo, has anyone tried to get the glasses to use servers other than Google's?