What Will Google Glass 2.0 Need To Actually Succeed?

Nerval's Lobster writes As previously rumored, Google has discontinued selling Google Glass, its augmented-reality headset... but it could be coming out with something new and (supposedly) improved. The company has placed a relentlessly positive spin on its decision: "Glass was in its infancy, and you took those very first steps and taught us how to walk," reads a posting on the Google+ page for Glass. "Well, we still have some work to do, but now we're ready to put on our big kid shoes and learn how to run." Formerly a project of the Google X research lab, Glass will now be overseen by Tony Fadell, the CEO of Google subsidiary (and Internet of Things darling) Nest; more than a few Glass users are unhappy with Google's decision. If Google's move indeed represents a quiet period before a relaunch, rather than an outright killing of the product, what can it do to ensure that Glass's second iteration proves more of a success? Besides costing less (the original Glass retailed for $1,500 from Google's online storefront), Google might want to focus on the GoPro audience, or simply explain to consumers why they actually need a pair of glasses with an embedded screen. What else could they do to make Glass 2.0 (whatever it looks like) succeed?

Comments

Re:Less creepiness

[Anrego]

Horrible as it is, this is a battle of social acceptance. Google wants wearing a camera on your face to become socially acceptable. Those of us who don't want to see this become the norm want to make sure it doesn't become socially acceptable.

Unfortunately the best way to achieve this is by being hostile towards people wearing the damn thing. Just as walking up to some random couple at a bar, pulling out your cellphone, and pointing the camera at them would likely attract hostility as a non-socially acceptable behaviour, so must wearing google glass.

This doesn't have to be violence, but it does have to be enough to make:

- the individual unhappy (negative re-enforcement against the socially unacceptable behaviour)
- observers nervous about engaging in the behaviour themselves (hmm, everyones telling this guy to shove his google glass up his ass, and one guy is even offering to help, maybe I shouldn't buy one just yet!)
- businesses nervous about incidents, hopefully enough to ban the devices

Observations from being a glass explorer.

[Darth Muffin]

My wife was a glass "explorer" and bought one, so I've got to try it some and watched her use it. Problems that I see are:
- Poor battery life
- Slow processor (what people really want to do with this is like augmented reality, and it's not quite got the horsepower)
- Lack of any apps that do something useful to most people that you can't do with a standard android device (just a gimmick at this point).
- Small and low-res screen, can't fit much useful info on it.
- Fragile

Honestly, the dorky looks and people freaking out because of privacy issues weren't an issue that we saw.
Most of the "explorers" are pretty mad that they spent $1500 to be abandoned. Google should at least offer a seriously discounted trade-up to the release model for them, but there is no talk of that. I doubt most explorers will buy it again.