For Some Would-Be Google Glass Buyers and Devs, Delays May Mean Giving Up

ErnieKey writes with a Reuters story that says Google's Glass, not yet out for general purchase, has been wearing on the patience of both developers and would-be customers: "After an initial burst of enthusiasm, signs that consumers are giving up on Glass have been building.' Is it true that Google Goggles are simply not attractive to wear? Or perhaps it's the invasion of privacy that is deterring people from wearing them. Regardless, Google needs to change something quickly before they lose all their potential customers. From the article: Of 16 Glass app makers contacted, nine said that they had stopped work on their projects or abandoned them, mostly because of the lack of customers or limitations of the device. Three more have switched to developing for business, leaving behind consumer projects. Plenty of larger developers remain with Glass. The nearly 100 apps on the official website include Facebook and OpenTable, although one major player recently defected: Twitter. "If there was 200 million Google Glasses sold, it would be a different perspective. There's no market at this point," said Tom Frencel, the chief executive of Little Guy Games, which put development of a Glass game on hold this year and is looking at other platforms, including the Facebook-owned virtual-reality goggles Oculus Rift. Several key Google employees instrumental to developing Glass have left the company in the last six months, including lead developer Babak Parviz, electrical engineering chief Adrian Wong, and Ossama Alami, director of developer relations.

Comments

Early adopters

[tomhath]

Google needs to change something quickly before they lose all their potential customers.

They might not be losing potential customers. Perhaps the market is just already saturated.

Re:Early adopters

[rudy_wayne]

Google needs to change something quickly before they lose all their potential customers.

They might not be losing potential customers. Perhaps the market is just already saturated.

Exactly. Everyone who is willing to drop $1500 on a gadget that is nothing more than a solution searching for a problem, has already done so.

Re:Early adopters

[postbigbang]

The fulcrum of backlash against the device in an almost uniform, vehement, and studied way exposing Google's complete disdain for respect of privacy might have something to do with it as well. Pulling back the Oz Curtain and exposing that Google's business model is the complete ownership of your personal information for their profit might be just too much advance with just one product.

Re:Early adopters

[ShanghaiBill]

As a GG app developer, let me give my perspective. There are plenty of potential applications, and few of those involve wandering around in public while wearing them. I developed an app for classroom management. The teacher wears the GG, and sees a "popup" whenever a student is stuck. The student could indicate this by using a clicker, or it could be indicated automatically if the student has several consecutive failures while using computerized learning, such as Khan Academy. This would be most useful for flipped classrooms so the teacher does not need to return to the desktop dashboard between helping students, but can go from student-to-student-to-student. I also worked on a warehouse app, that would guide pickers to the destination rack and shelf. But I gave up. The problem is that GG seems to be stuck in "beta" forever, with no roadmap to ever turn into an actual released product. It is supposed to only be for "developers", and only for a price of $1500, which is way, way too high for broad applications. Google needs to get this product out, to the general public, at a reasonable price (~ $100). If they don't, it is going to die, or be replaced by a product from a company that knows how to ship a product.

Re:Early adopters

[ShanghaiBill]

The product; just like smart watches; is currently impossible ... until we get battery technology which lets you have at least android phone computing power

Not true. Battery life isn't that much of an issue. GG is not standalone. You use it with another device, and any heavy computing can be offloaded to a cellphone, and from there, maybe, to a server. Many people think that GG is "always on" and displaying/recording continuously. It doesn't work that way. The display doesn't use much power, and power can be reduced even more by dimming or using the display intermittently. In my applications, the display only turns on when there is a new notification. The notification is on for a few seconds, and then fades. The user can then speak or tap the glasses to light it back up. A user can go all day on one charge.

It seems to me that Google really hasn't figured out what to do with this device, or how to attract developers, and they seem to have no idea how to get people to accept it. The anecdote in TFA about Sergey wearing it to the beach is indicative of the problem. The beach is probably the place where people would be most offended at the perception of being recorded, and I can't see any possible practical use for it there.

Re:Early adopters

[xevioso]

"This would be most useful for flipped classrooms [wikipedia.org] so the teacher does not need to return to the desktop dashboard between helping students, but can go from student-to-student-to-student. "

Or...and I know this is a shocking concept...the students could raise their hands when they need assistance?

This is what the OP meant by a solution in search of a problem.

Re:Early adopters

[Nemyst]

Yes, and a lot of students don't, be it because of shame from having to ask a question, pride in solving it themselves, or whatever else. If this new method of teaching provides better results, why not use it? Because you didn't have it and made it just fine, ergo everyone should just get on with it?

It's a combination of problems

[Opportunist]

The market is probably saturated, but only because the item is only appealing to a very small market.

First and foremost, you need someone who'd want an always on cellphone display mounted right in front of his eye. Now, I could see me wanting this. Granted, I've been into wearable computing for a while now, but I could well see a lot of people who can't take their fingers off their cellphone long enough to hold down a sensible conversation to want a HMD. That certainly would not be the problem, I can well see a lot of technically interested people wanting something like this. And if the "group selector" ended here, there would actually probably be a huge market for this item.

Then there's the price, which pretty much eliminates the under-21 crowd, arguably one of the biggest early adopters today. Face it, if some cellphone has some new feature, rest assured some high school kid will bind itself to some cell company for longer than their average relationship lasts so they can afford it. Since there is no such thing with Google Glass and the item costs quite a pretty penny, what's left after these two are technologically inclined people with quite a bit of money to spare on what is essentially a novelty luxury item.

The last nail for the coffin is Google itself. Google now doesn't really have a reputation of not wanting to know everything their customers do. That's basically their business model. They sell information. And with Google Glass you'd not only not know where it's been, you also won't know where it is going. And even if they themselves don't really care about privacy, it also means that their friends and collegues must not care about it, or else ... why bother buying something that you can't really use as soon as anyone is nearby? Because the VERY FIRST thing I'd ask a Google Glass user to do is take the thing off while I'm around. Alternatively I'll remove it from his nose.

So the market is for technically inclined people who have good enough jobs to afford this luxury who are neither worried about their privacy nor have coworkers or friends who are.

And that market is REALLY tiny.