Culture

Sorry, Future Glassholes: It Looks Like Days Are Numbered For Google Glass

App developers are abandoning their Glass-related projects, unloved Glasses are being flogged on eBay, and even the co-founder stepped out barefaced this weekend.

by Simon Miraudo  17 November 2014

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The great Google Glass experiment has seemingly failed, with even Google co-founder Sergey Brin relegating the ugly child of his tech family to the metaphorical attic.

After two years of having the embarrassing product adorn his head at various public events, Brin reportedly attended a Silicon Valley shindig on Sunday sans glasses. His argument: he’d left them in the car.

Presumably a locked one, which he then let roll into a lake.

Though Brin was recently sighted wearing the Google Glass at the beach – which no doubt enhanced his open-air leisure time and inspired nothing but awe from his fellow outdoorsmen – it does seem the product’s days are numbered, with nine of the 16 major app developers contacted by Reuters admitting they were abandoning projects intended for the device, thanks to poor consumer take-up.

The major blow? Twitter recently stopped supporting Google Glass as well. Although that may have just been to spare its sensitive users from misinterpreting all the constructive criticism being Tweeted at them:

Having perhaps taken the sage advice of GOLDIE ice COLD to heart, many early adopters are now peddling their unloved Google Glasses on eBay. Originally retailing for $US1500 (and remember, this is still the test version), second hand Glasses can now be snagged online for half the price.

Google is yet to officially launch the product widely (the test devices aren’t yet being sold in the Australian market), and some developers now believe it may never happen, thanks to the public’s ceaseless mockery of Google Glass wearers. The tech giant tried to position them as ‘Explorers’, but ‘Glassholes’ became the widely accepted nickname — or, according to some, ‘dickholes’:

The company could salvage some Glass-wearing face by enticing businesses and industries with their current ‘two-for-one’ discounts — a sales technique that we all know only increases a brand’s perceived value and cachet. But sooner, rather than later, Sergey Brin might have to pull a Piper Laurie and call its rejected Carrie of a product in for a hug, knife hidden behind his back.

Either that or this article will one day be read on our Government-mandated Google Glasses as a stunning indictment of earlier generations’ ignorance and fear of the new. Like the time the New Yorker compared The Beatles unfavourably to the Everly Brothers.