Google Glass is another device that goes into the “elephant graveyard” of the search giant. The company has updated its support page to announce that it does canceled its sale from 15.3.2023it won’t offer any software updates and will only officially support them until next September.

It’s been more than a decade since Google Glass was announced. Connected Glasses Project, very interesting on paper and that it was destined to shine in the emerging wearables market that was starting to explode at the time. The original project ended incl fiasco.

Questionable design; disorder with errors and lack of fluency; limited autonomy; high price and serious privacy issues with worldwide bans, they forced Google to decide to suspend sales of the original model. The project moved to an independent division under the command of Tony Fadell (a former Apple engineer who was on the team of design guru “Jony” Ive, creator of devices such as the iPod) and with the subsequent launch focused on the professional market. the ‘Enterprise Edition’ version.

Goodbye Google Glass (again and now for good)

The enterprise version had a minimal response, as it happened in consumption, and Google postponed it again: Thank you for more than a decade of innovation and partnership. From March 15, 2023 we will no longer sell the Glass Enterprise edition. We will continue to support them until September 15, 2023.”you can read on the support page.

Existing customers can continue to use the glasses indefinitely, but without support from September. Most of the apps and features that work today, such as meet on the glassthey should continue to do so for the foreseeable future, and companies that have developed their own software for the platform should be able to provide updates.

But Google will no longer sell Google Glass nor do they plan to provide bug fixes, security patches or other feature updates. The company will keep the latest version of the system image available for download until April 1, 2024.

Are all investments lost?

Not really. Google Glass was a device ahead of its time, and that’s where some of its problems and lack of interest from consumers, companies, and developers come from. But all the experience gained must be valuable for the future and the commercialization of other wearable devices. In fact, Google is still in the thick of things, developing glasses for augmented reality.

Needless to say, none of these glasses really did well in sales. We have the greatest proof that a giant like Apple, which sells everything it makes in bulk, It hasn’t even dared to enter this segment yet. Its CEO Tim Cook acknowledged this a few years ago “the technology alone to create this type of device with quality”, did not exist. And not just glasses. Sales of virtual/augmented reality devices have not exploded as the industry expected.