MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Google has announced that starting next week it will discontinue sales of Glass, the innovative digitally enhanced eyewear launched in 2013 as part of the company's "blue sky" Google X division, the BBC reported today.
At first, only a select few could get their hands on a pair of Glass, but in 2014 the company announced that they could be acquired through its Explorer program for a cool $1,500 each.
The people who shelled out that cash now appear to have been cut loose. However, the BBC did add, "The company insists it is still committed to launching the smart glasses as a consumer product, but will stop producing Glass in its present form. Instead it will focus on 'future versions of Glass' with work carried out by a different division to before."
But according to BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, "Google has tried to present this announcement as just another step in the evolution of an amazing innovation. But make no mistake—Google Glass is dead, at least in its present form."
Cellan-Jones also anticipates a lot of unhappy investors, writing, "Google will now have to deal with a disgruntled community of Explorers who paid a large sum for a device which they must have believed would eventually evolve into something more useful."
On the upside, he added, "The Glass team can at least continue its work out of the spotlight without the pressure of deadlines. Tony Fadell, the former Apple designer Google acquired with his smart thermostat firm Nest, will oversee the future of the product. Both he and the Glass team leader Ivy Ross, who has come from the fashion world, will know that form as well as function will have to be at the centre of any successful piece of wearable technology."
Regarding why Google has decided to redirect its efforts with a product that has received so much attention since it was launched, the BBC suggests one reason might have been waning interest by influential techies.
For instance, "The technology blogger Robert Scoble said he could not now imagine living a day without the product, and was even photographed wearing it in the shower. But he and others soon tired of Glass, complaining that it was not evolving in the ways that had been promised," reported BBC.
As well, Glass was increasingly met with outright hostility by movie theater operators as well as other establishments concerned about invasion of privacy by Glass-wearing nerds. Some bars and restaurants even banned the "use of the smart glasses on their premises."
As AVN has reported, there was a lot of interest in the adult entertainment industry about the prospective benefits to shooting POV porn using Glass, so much so that Google at one point changed its content policy in an attempt to keep sexually explicit content off of Glass. Interest continued, however, an inevitability considering adult's perpetual interest in the latest technologies.
