Google goes back to drawing board with its hi-tech glasses
(R17 300), was launched in the US in 2013 and in the UK last year, and was expected to be followed by a mass market rollout.
Now Google says the Explorer programme will come to an end and it will stop taking orders from Monday.
Touted as the first major wearable tech item, Glass was reportedly the brainchild of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who has rarely been seen in public without a pair since its launch.
The device, which consists of a glasses-like frame with a small screen above the user’s right eye, promised to deliver multiple, revolutionary handsfree applications. Yet modest sales were compounded by concer ns about privacy – with some bars and restaurants banning Glass, whose users earned the nickname “Glassholes”.
Google said it would offer support to companies that were using Glass. This week, Tesco became the first major UK retailer to launch a Glass app, Tesco Grocery, which allows shoppers to browse supermarket shelves and make purchases hands-free.
Last year, in a Reuters survey of 16 Glass app developers, nine said they had stopped working on their apps because of the device’s technical limitations or lack of popularity.
Speaking in Bogota, Colombia, this week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appeared to suggest another reason for Glass’s failure to take hold in the public imagination: the device just looks “weird”. Asked to predict how tech hardware might evolve, Zuckerberg said: “In another 10 to 15 years… we will have something we can wear. Maybe it will look like just normal glasses so it won’t look weird like some of the stuff that exists today.”
No single product has yet taken off spectacularly. – The Independent