There were disagreements at Google over the usage and readiness of Google Glass, but that didn’t deter Sergey Brin from turning the device into a spectacle when it went public in 2012. That’s my assessment of the main takeaway from an article in today’s New York Times called Why Google Glass Broke. It’s worth a [...]
The post NY Times: Sergey Brin Took Glass Public Knowing It Wasn’t A Finished Product appeared first on Glass Almanac.
There were disagreements at Google over the usage and readiness of Google Glass, but that didn’t deter Sergey Brin from turning the device into a spectacle when it went public in 2012.
That’s my assessment of the main takeaway from an article in today’s New York Times called Why Google Glass Broke. It’s worth a click, but probably won’t be all that newsworthy to most of our readers.
Author Nick Bilton doesn’t name sources, but says he spoke with “a half-dozen current and former Google employees who were involved with Google Glass.” For me, the most interesting bit is about the internal tension that was happening in the summer of 2012 when Sergey Brin launched Glass with a spectacular demo at Google I/O.
One faction argued that it should be worn all day, like a “fashionable device,” while others thought it should be worn only for specific utilitarian functions. Still, nearly everyone at X was in agreement that the current prototype was just that: a prototype, with major kinks to be worked out.
There was one notable dissenter. Mr. Brin knew Google Glass wasn’t a finished product and that it needed work, but he wanted that to take place in public, not in a top-secret lab. Mr. Brin argued that X should release Glass to consumers and use their feedback to iterate and improve the design.
And a couple paragraphs later:
“The team within Google X knew the product wasn’t even close to ready for prime time,” a former Google employee said. The Google marketing team and Mr. Brin had other plans.
Glass design lead Isabelle Olsson touched on the challenge of developing Glass in public in a recent interview. Google obviously views that as a mistake at this point. When the Explorer program shut down last month, Google promised that no one will see the next version of Glass “until it’s ready.”
(Photo by Steve Jurvetson via Creative Commons.)
The post NY Times: Sergey Brin Took Glass Public Knowing It Wasn’t A Finished Product appeared first on Glass Almanac.
