After two years of popping up at high-profile events sporting Google Glass — the gadget that transforms eyeglasses into spy-movie worthy technology — Google Inc cofounder Sergey Brin sauntered bare-faced into a Silicon Valley red-carpet event on Sunday last week.
He had 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 a pair to the beach.
However, Brin’s timing is not propitious, coming as many developers and early Glass users are losing interest in the much-hyped, US$1,500 test version of the product: A camera, processor and stamp-sized computer screen mounted to the edge of eyeglass frames. Google itself has pushed back the Glass rollout to the mass market.
While Glass might find specialized uses in the workplace, its prospects of becoming a consumer hit in the near future are slim, many said.
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. The nearly 100 apps on the official Web site include Facebook Inc and OpenTable Inc.
“If there [were] 200 million Google Glasses sold, it would be a different perspective. There’s no market at this point,” said Tom Frencel, chief executive of Little Guy Games, which put development of a Glass game on hold and is looking at other platforms, including the Facebook-owned virtual-reality goggle, Oculus Rift.
Several Google employees instrumental to Glass have left the company in the past six months, including lead developer Babak Parviz, lead electrical engineer Adrian Wong and Ossama Alami, director of developer relations.
Google insists that 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 of early adopters use Glass in a pilot consumer program.
“We are completely energized and as energized as ever about the opportunity that wearables and Glass in particular represent,” Glass business operations lead Chris O’Neill said.
“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.
The lack of a 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 paused a Glass app for logging exercise and biking.
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