Google Glass Signs Deal With Ray Ban's Parent Company

sfcrazy (1542989) writes with news that fancier Google Glasswear is coming soon "Google has signed a deal with The Luxottica Group, the world's largest eyewear company (controlling 80% of the eyewear market). Luxottica owns Ray-Ban, Oakley, Vogue-Eyewear, Persol, Oliver Peoples, Alain Mikli, and Arnette. The deal shows how serious Google is about Glass, contrary to the skepticism raised by high-profiled users like Robert Scoble who spelled doom for the device."

Comments

fuck me

[Chrisq]

At this rate Google will be the new Apple. Overpriced designer products that rely on being the "in thing" anyone?

Re:fuck me

[Anonymous Coward]

Docs was at least partly based on Google's acquisition of Upstartle, though Google have added substantially to it since. It isn't that unique though. MS Office Web-apps and others offer much of the same. Gmail was developed internally, but I would argue that the main driver for success was the marketing genius of offering 1 GB storage and large attachments at at time when others had like 2MB which was constant pain-point for users. And the invite-only launch, which not only generated interest and demand, but also helped to keep spam down.

Re:fuck me

[ls671]

I am quite over 21 but I am still pretty. I am 78.

Interested?

Re:fuck me

[Savage-Rabbit]

If you're doing professional document editing in a browser, you're insane.

The portability, sharing and collaboration of Gdocs is light years ahead of the others. Nobody I know gives a rats ass about "professional" editing.

You have evidently never done a Bachelor's or Master's Thesis. If you had you'd be familiar with a group of people that places much importance on "professional" editing. Granted, scientists use TEX rather than an office suite but the 'professional' editing of scientific reports, thesis and papers is almost considered as important as the content and there are some very good and obvious reasons for that.

Re:fuck me

[postbigbang]

The OS is only part of it. I am not a fanboi, but Apple does several things nicely:

-it creates reality distortion fields of billion dollar size
-it has consistent build quality that reflects serious engineering feats, and vendor liaison and supply-chain discipline
-it has remarkable consistency, good and bad, mostly good
-they are very good at supporting their users and are very connected/focused on their users
-they are masters, perhaps wizards at meme control.

The OS is very important, but that's not why they get top dollar for their goods. Their assets don't depreciate as rapidly, and they are fiendishly consistent.

Re:fuck me

[BitZtream]

Thats because nobody you know does anything of importance, and thats really sad in this day and age.

80% of market in terms of what?

[captainpanic]

Many people wear cheap sunglasses - I guess "80% of the eyewear market" is in terms of value, not volume, since 1 Ray-ban costs about as much as 100 cheap sunglasses?

Re:80% of market in terms of what?

[nemasu]

Never mind, this makes no sense. But this does: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... That is a loot of well known brands.

Re: 80% of market in terms of what?

[RocketSW]

Luxoticca not only owns a wide range of premium and "budget" eyewear brands (prescription glasses and sunglasses), they also own LensCrafters. Pearle vision, sears optical, target optical, and Sunglass Hut to name a few. Additionally they own the vision insurance company EyeMed.

The word "monopoly" comes to mind.

There was a 60 minutes piece about this not too long ago:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g...

Re: 80% of market in terms of what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google getting in bed with Luxottica is probably about as close to being evil as I've considered from them, honestly. I don't care about the "I am a product" aspect of Google's business model, because it has never inconvenienced me and I don't feel like I have some magical nature that means I suffer for having this targeted to a profile of me that they've made. I like what Google does, it makes my life easier and even though they might not have the best usability in a lot of cases, it's acceptable.

But Luxottica are just plain bastards. Got an optical practice and want to sell Ray-Bans? Sure, just sell a bunch of crap you don't want, too. Want to have your own practice? Now you're competing with a vendor but on multiple levels. They're a bunch of monopolistic bastards, and Google just jumped into bed with the worst fucks in that industry. Thanks, Google.

Re: 80% of market in terms of what?

[haruchai]

I watched that recently and was astonished at their stranglehold on the market. Kudos to 60 Minutes for digging this up.

Re:Oh boy!

[Joce640k]

...and how does Google dumping money into something make it un-doomed? It can still fail just as badly as before.

Luxotica

[bl968]

I posted this story a few years ago about Luxotica...

What makes glasses so expensive? Oblong plastic lenses? Plastic and metal frames? No, we’re getting screwed!

Those of us who need prescription eyewear need prescription eyewear. Are you wearing yours to read this? Imagine if you weren’t. Imagine life without your glasses for a year, a week, an hour. Yet many health insurance plans, especially for the unemployed or self-employed, don’t cover them.

http://www.clarksvilleonline.c...

Yay!

[Maury Markowitz]

So one near monopoly with 80% market share is getting together with another near monopoly with a 90% market share?

What could possibly go wrong?

The Luxottica Group

[Larry_Dillon]

The Luxottica Group is the recognized leader in over priced eye-ware.