Production of Google Glass, the wearable smart glasses featuring web-connected video screens, is to come to end, but the company insists that it remains committed to the idea and will release a new version of the glasses "when they are ready".
The technology delivers information to users through a small transparent screen attached to modified spectacle frames. Glass can also take photos and videos, show maps and connect to the internet.
Following a protracted period of testing in the United States in 2013, Glass was launched in the UK last summer as part of the Glass Explorer programme, which made prototypes available to a select band of developers. But after a wave of initial excitement about the project, enthusiasm soon began to wane as concerns emerged over the wearable technology's safety and its impact on privacy.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Some bars and restaurants banned people from wearing Glass on their premises. And early adopters complained that the technology was not developing in the ways that had been promised, BBC reports.
In a statement posted to its Google+ account, the company said the Glass team will now be removed from the experimental Google X labs division, to become a separate team under manager Ivy Ross.
Google described the Glass Explorer programme as "a kind of 'open beta' to hear what people had to say".
"As we look to the road ahead, we realise that we've outgrown the lab and so we're officially 'graduating' from Google[x] to be our own team here at Google," the statement said. "In the meantime, we're continuing to build for the future, and you'll start to see future versions of Glass when they're ready."
Google has tried to present this announcement as "just another step in the evolution of an amazing innovation", says BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, "but make no mistake - Google Glass is dead, at least in its present form".
The company will now have to deal with "a disgruntled community of Explorers" who bought the device believing it would develop into something indispensable, Cellan-Jones concludes.
-
Bluetoothing: the phenomenon driving HIV spike in FijiUnder the Radar ‘Blood-swapping’ between drug users fuelling growing health crisis on Pacific island
-
Marisa Silver’s 6 favorite books that capture a lifetimeFeature The author recommends works by John Williams, Ian McEwan, and more
-
Book reviews: ‘We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution’ and ‘Will There Ever Be Another You’Feature The many attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution and Patricia Lockwood’s struggle with long Covid
-
Is the UK government getting too close to Big Tech?Today’s Big Question US-UK tech pact, supported by Nvidia and OpenAI, is part of Silicon Valley drive to ‘lock in’ American AI with US allies
-
Google: A monopoly past its prime?Feature Google’s antitrust case ends with a slap on the wrist as courts struggle to keep up with the tech industry’s rapid changes
-
South Korea's divide over allowing Google MapsTalking Points The country is one of few modern democracies where the app doesn't work
-
Google avoids the worst in antitrust rulingSpeed Read A federal judge rejected the government's request to break up Google
-
Is AI killing the internet?Talking Point AI-powered browsers and search engines are threatening the death of the open web
-
Unreal: A quantum leap in AI videoFeature Google's new Veo 3 is making it harder to distinguish between real videos and AI-generated ones
-
Google's new AI Mode feature hints at the next era of searchIn the Spotlight The search giant is going all in on AI, much to the chagrin of the rest of the web
-
Is Apple breaking up with Google?Today's Big Question Google is the default search engine in the Safari browser. The emergence of artificial intelligence could change that.
