Technology, Opinion Piece

Google! What’s the deal with Google Glass?


google.com/glass

Aaaaahhhh Google Glass! Many people would give some of the things they cherish away for just a few moments with this device.  Some people want this device to impress all their friends, family and people around them. Others want to tear it apart, study it, tweak it or even build something new, while people like myself want to develop and design apps and services for the device.

Two Comments from the Google+ User +Shawn Mernagh Inspired this blog post:

…..Its discouraging to know I missed the Google conference because the site froze before I could pay. Then to realize I missed the explorer program by a day. Then to see posts from a guy in Cali who was homeless with a broken phone picked to buy and use glass. Then E-bay.. I was so discouraged and feeling like an outsider looking in……

I have been using Google+ since the beta launch and i had fallen in love with the platform.  By February 2012, i had started migrating from iOS development and started tinkering around with the Android platform. I figured i would Go to Google I/O that year and see what the android developer scene was all about, as well as find some developers to network with. When the time came around for me to purchase the tickets, Their purchasing system crashed and wouldn’t allow me to purchase tickets. Fast forward to May, The developers who were able to attend that I/O conference were offered the opportunity to purchase Google Glass and supposedly Google didn’t completely sell out of all the slots then. I was disappointed at that time that i didn’t get to make it there, but thought that maybe Google would open this platform up to more developers since they were saying that they wanted developers to create on this platform and they knew they had many developers that were locked out from that conference. 

February 2013 Google announced that they would launch the #ifihadglass program. This would allow people of the public the same opportunities that they were giving the developers from I/O 2012, The Opportunity to buy Glass. I was confused because the developers from I/O 2012, still hadn’t received their Google Glass, and Google was already getting them out into the public. The contest was to give glass to people who had great ideas for Glass, a chance (in advance) to implement those ideas with glass. People (like myself) worked hard on coming up with great ideas, However when it was time to select winners, people who were awarded the opportunity were posts like \”if i had glass i’d Cut a Bitch\” and other types of things that wouldn’t help glass development at all.

I was shocked and also disappointed that posts like this won the contest and not mine. I don’t think my idea was the greatest on the planet, but i would of loved to read through some ideas that would of been better than mine to see were i could improve mine. But since none of us offered to ‘throw glass at your face’ I guess we didn’t make the cut.

Backlash began on the internet regarding this contest because it appeared Google was doing a Powerball Jackpot lottery more than they were selecting the best ones. Google started disqualifying the ones that were publicized mess ups, but this still left serious developers out of the loop.
Later Google renamed the official Google Glass page from Project Glass to Google Glass and everything shifted from being developer oriented to appearing that Google just wanted to advertise an unfinished product with no valuable use case other than to take a picture, because developers haven’t been allowed to actually develop for it on a massive scale. Glass has since been sold on eBay in upwards of $15,000! This left developers with serious projects but no Glass access, with one option, to buy off of eBay. Later Google again, rolled out an invite program which allows current glass owners to invite a friend to join glass, but if you don’t know anyone with glass, or know someone who isn’t going to try to make a profit by selling the invite on eBay, then again, you are out of luck.

I have been extremely disappointed with the way Google has handled the whole Google Glass Program. From day one it seems Google hasn’t put any thought or effort into the organization of the program. They even stated the consumer release was going to be 2013, but later it was pushed into 2014. I originally said that knowing Google’s old track record it would be well into 2015 before Glass are being sold publicly on Google Play, and the fact that they are still giving away Explorer editions still makes me think its going to be 2015.

Back in the day I used to say \”Google Over Promises and Under Delivers!\” Then Google+ came along and it has been an amazing platform (minus the communities section), followed by Ice Cream Sandwich and other improvements and i started to think this wasn’t the case anymore. But with the Flukes of Google I/O and the \”don’t care\” attitude toward the Developer Community, I’m starting to think there are still some aspects of Google that hasn’t changed.

Hopefully Google somehow turns this around but it appears to be highly unlikely. I’ll end this post off with the second comment from +Shawn Mernagh:

 …I think Glass has become more of a publicity stunt than a product for those of us that really want to create a useful heads up display system.  Supermodel photo shoots..  Release date rumors, yet no access for us real developers and engineers unless we become a friend of a glass owner and hope to get an invite, or bid on E-bay..  

 and that appears to be the case.
Supermodel Photo Shoots and here
Release Date Rumors and here
Ebay Sales and Invite sales here
Shawn Mernagh’s Original comment location.“

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