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 He'd left his pair in the car, Brin told a reporter. The Googler,
who heads up the top-secret lab which developed Glass, has hardly
given up on the product -- he recently wore his pair to the beach.
But Brin's timing is not propitious, coming as many developers and
early Glass users are losing interest in the much-hyped, $1,500 test
version of the product: a camera, processor and stamp-sized computer
screen mounted to the edge of eyeglass frames. Google Inc itself has
pushed back the Glass roll out to the mass market.
While Glass may find some specialized, even lucrative, uses in the
workplace, its prospects of becoming a consumer hit in the near
future are slim, many developers say.
Of 16 Glass app makers contacted by Reuters, nine said that they had
stopped work on their projects or abandoned them, mostly because of
the lack of customers or limitations of the device. Three more have
switched to developing for business, leaving behind consumer
projects.
Plenty of larger developers remain with Glass. The nearly 100 apps
on the official web site include Facebook and OpenTable, although
one major player recently defected: Twitter.
"If there was 200 million Google Glasses sold, it would be a
different perspective. There’s no market at this point," said Tom
Frencel, the Chief Executive of Little Guy Games, which put
development of a Glass game on hold this year and is looking at
other platforms, including the Facebook Inc-owned virtual-reality
goggles Oculus Rift.
Several key Google employees instrumental to developing Glass have
left the company in the last six months, including lead developer
Babak Parviz, electrical engineering chief Adrian Wong, and Ossama
Alami, director of developer relations.
And a Glass funding consortium created by Google Ventures and two of
Silicon Valley's biggest venture capitalists, Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers and Andreessen Horowitz, quietly deleted its
website, routing users to the main Glass site.
Google insists it is committed to Glass, with hundreds of engineers
and executives working on it, as well as new fashionista boss Ivy
Ross, a former Calvin Klein executive. Tens of thousands use Glass
in the pilot consumer program.
“We are completely energized and as energized as ever about the
opportunity that wearables and Glass in particular represent," said
Glass Head of Business Operations Chris O'Neill.
Glass was the first project to emerge from Google’s X division, the
secretive group tasked with developing “moonshot” products such as
self-driving cars. Glass and wearable devices overall amount to a
new technology, as smartphones once were, that will likely take time
to evolve into a product that clicks with consumers.
“We are as committed as ever to a consumer launch. That is going to
take time and we are not going to launch this product until it’s
absolutely ready,” O'Neill said.
Brin had predicted a launch this year, but 2015 is now the most
likely date, a person familiar with the matter said.
GLASS SELLING... ON EBAY
After an initial burst of enthusiasm, signs that consumers are
giving up on Glass have been building.
Google dubbed the first set of several thousand Glass users as
"Explorers." But as the Explorers hit the streets, they drew stares
and jokes. Some people viewed the device, capable of surreptitious
video recording, as an obnoxious privacy intrusion, deriding the
once-proud Explorers as “Glassholes.”
“It looks super nerdy,” said Shevetank Shah, a Washington, DC-based
consultant, whose Google Glass now gathers dust in a drawer. “I’m a
card carrying nerd, but this was one card too many.”
Glass now sells on eBay for as little as half list price.
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Some developers recently have felt unsupported by investors and, at
times, Google itself.
The Glass Collective, the funding consortium co-run by Google
Ventures, invested in only three or four small start-ups by the
beginning of this year, a person familiar with the statistics said.
A Google Ventures spokeswoman declined to comment on the number of
investments and said the Web site was closed for simplicity. "We
just found it's easier for entrepreneurs to come to us directly,"
she said.
The lack of a launch date has given some developers the impression
that Google still treats Glass as an experiment.
“It’s not a big enough platform to play on seriously," said Matthew
Milan, founder of Toronto-based software firm Normative Design,
which put on hold a Glass app for logging exercise and biking.
Mobile game company Glu Mobile, known for its popular “Kim
Kardashian: Hollywood” title, was one of the first to launch a game
on Glass. Spellista, a puzzler released a year ago, is still
available, but Glu has discontinued work on it, a spokesman for the
company said.
Another developer, Sean McCracken, won $10,000 in a contest last
year for creating an aliens-themed video game for Glass, Psyclops,
but Google never put it on the official hub for Glass apps, making
it tougher to find. He has quit working on updates.
Still, there are some enthusiastic developers. Cycling and running
app Strava finds Glass well-suited for its users, who want real-time
data on their workouts, said David Lorsch, vice president of
business development. And entrepreneur Jake Steinerman said it is
ideal for his company, DriveSafe, which detects if people are
falling asleep at the wheel.
PIVOTING AWAY
In April, Google launched the Glass at Work program to help make the
device useful for specific industries, such as healthcare and
manufacturing. So far the effort has resulted in apps that are being
tested or used at companies such as Boeing and Yum Brands' Taco
Bell.
Google is selling Glass in bulk to some businesses, offering
two-for-one discounts.
CrowdOptic, which uses Glass as portable computers for surgeons and
other people out of offices, is currently in use at 19 U.S.
hospitals and expects that to grow to 100 hospitals early next year,
said Chief Executive Jon Fisher.
Alex Foster began See Through, a Glass advertising analytics firm
for business, after a venture firm earlier this year withdrew its
offer to back his consumer-oriented Glass fitness company when it
became clear no big consumer Glass release was imminent.
"It was devastating," he said. "All of the consumer glass startups
are either completely dead or have pivoted," to enterprise products
or rival wearables.
(editing by Edwin Chan and Peter Henderson)
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