Google Glass or Google Pass?

Google Glass is Googles attempt at creating smart glasses. Google Glass are worn on the head, as you would a normal pair of glasses, which feature a small laser light that creates the display that you would see in front of your eyes. Glass can display the time, weather, message notifications, photos, videos and more. Similar to what you can access of an iPhone. On the side of Glass there is a touchpad which can be used to scroll through the menu to select an app, or you can use voice commands.

While smart glasses themselves aren’t exactly dominating the market, Google certainly did not do themselves any favours when it came to creating the product.

The hype behind the product before it was actually released was substantial, but when the glasses came to market, it was disappointing, and essentially, a huge flop. Google Glass are now known as ‘that innovative product that failed’.

Upon release, Glass was available exclusively to a selected few customers, for $1500. This selection of ‘early adopters’ consisted mainly of tech geeks and journalists, who would find little use for the product. One user described Google Glass as the ‘worst $1500 I ever spent’.

Firstly, Google struggled to distinguish the problem that the Google Glass would solve for customers. Neither of its two main functions; to take a photo or video quicker than it would take to grab your phone out of your pocket, and to instantly search the web using voice commands, seemed to fill a gap in consumers lives. We have our smart phones for that.

Oh, and it didn’t even seem to conduct these two functions correctly, with reports stating that the glasses would stop working during firewall updates, and the main menu and apps sometimes being unresponsive.

People were also concerned about constant radiation being emitted so close to their heads, which caused headaches, as well as concern involving the built in camera. Due to this, the glasses were banned from casinos and movie theatres to prevent illegal filming. Too many ways for the Glasses to be exploited, as well as Google failing to make it clear as to whether the Glasses were intended to be worn all the time, or only on certain occasions.

Above all, the glass were unattractive, and frankly, strange looking as you can see from the image above. I mean, would you wear these?… In public? And would you talk about loud to give commands? Google seemed to assume that the hype behind Google Glass would eliminate the fact that people may be embarrassed to wear these in public.

Now we can’t discard the fact that smart glasses are most definitely a thing of the future that will eventually become as normal as a smart phone is now, but I think the truth is, that we are simply not ready yet.