Never fear, Glassholes. Though many predicted the end had come when Google announced it would halt commercial sales of its wearable technology, according to the Wall Street Journal, the platform and facecomputer are still on life support.
“It is a big and very fundamental platform for Google,” Schmidt said in an interview in which he justified the halt to Glass' Explorer option for the public. “We ended the Explorer program and the press conflated this into us canceling the whole project, which isn’t true. Google is about taking risks and there’s nothing about adjusting Glass that suggests we’re ending it.” Maybe it was just our wishful thinking, then.
Drawing an analogy to autonomous cars, on which the company is also hard at work, Schmidt defended Glass against those who would call it a dissapointment. “That’s like saying the self-driving car is a disappointment because it’s not driving me around now,” he said. “These things take time.”
These days, Glass is out of the Google X research lab and now occupies a standalone unit. Ivy Ross is still Glass team head but now Tony Fadell, who heads Google’s Nest connected home division, is in charge of strategy for the project.
Yes, reports of the death of Google Glass were greatly exaggerated. But the future product will likely be quite different than originally intended. Glass might be, as the move would indicate, less a consumer product and more a vocational one, a tool to be worn by police or doctors in the line of work.
Previously: Google Saves Face, Halts Sales Of Glass