Those weird pair of glasses the Google guy wore all the time?

Yes, since its launch in 2013, all the online space devoted to Google Glass and the numerous photographs of Sergey Brin sporting it made Glass the most audacious product emerging from the world of wearable technology. Not a bad start, considering how Google described it as starting from “little more than a scuba mask attached to a laptop”.

Didn’t Google just announce it was killing Glass?

No, apparently, that announcement was mostly misunderstood. Google said that it was ‘graduating’ the Glass project out of its hyper-secret Google [x] lab and giving the project its own team. Also that the last of the Glass Explorer Edition pieces would be sold out in January, so hurry!

Explorer Edition?

That’s the most significant part of Glass history. At its launch in 2013, Google knew Glass was far from a finished product. So instead of retailing the device, Google made Glass available to handpicked ‘early adopters’ — mostly geeks and tech journalists — to get them to use the product, popularise it and provide feedback. These ‘Glass Explorers’ could get a pair for $1,500.

So they were the ones thrown out of restaurants and casinos?

The privacy debate. Despite its uber coolness, what irked the public was that lesser mortals like us had no way of knowing when the Glass camera was on. As a result, Glass failed the all-important public perception test and earned a lot of flak because it was obnoxiously intrusive.

Didn’t they know any better?

That depends on what you make of Glass in the first place. The consensus within Google is that Glass was released prematurely. Brin’s experiment to develop the product right under the public’s nose, instead of in secret the way Google usually does these things, seemed to have backfired.

Besides the perceptions, the product itself is said to have had poor battery life and was ‘plagued with bugs’, according to a recent report in The New York Times .

The death-knell of the project possibly was news leaked in 2014 of a love affair between Brin and Amanda Rosenberg, Glass’ marketing manager. With that began Glass’ eventual decline; at least, the decline of its first avatar. And last month, Google put out a notice saying Glass was going back into hibernation.

That’s the end of Glass then?

Google says interest in wearable technology has only increased since the launch of Glass, so it’s going to keep working on the product. So it seems that all those obituaries came a tad too early.

So it’s not really dead.

Far from it. Many companies are actually still working on projects that will use Google Glass technology. But this time, it might be more of an industrial device than a consumer gadget.

For instance, one startup is trying to mould Glass into a device that children with autism can use when interacting with other people. Another use is for surgeons who can access hands-free online data or the Glass camera while at work.

And what’s Google doing meanwhile?

Google is reportedly providing these companies with as many Glass devices and all the support they require, while also working on improvements in the design and technology as well. If anything, the world has just seen the first stage of Glass and more experiments should be expected. Probably in medicine, probably in manufacturing, but not at your local restaurant.

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