Google ends sales of Glass, its augmented reality smart glasses

New York:

Google will no longer sell the latest Enterprise edition of Google Glass, CNN Business reported.

The company’s announcement this week will effectively kill off a line of innovative but failed wearables from another era that many consumers may have assumed are long gone.

First unveiled in 2013, Google Glass was initially marketed to a general audience, with the promise of giving people access to a computer on their face rather than having to pull out a phone. But smart glasses were discontinued in 2015 after beta versions failed to gain traction due to their high price, clunky design and privacy concerns, according to CNN Business.

Google then shifted the focus from consumers to businesses. The first Enterprise edition of Glass, announced in 2017, was pushed for use in industries such as manufacturing and logistics. The Enterprise Edition 2, released in 2019, was Google’s latest attempt to save the Glass product. But the $999 product failed to catch on, CNN Business said.

“Thank you for over a decade of innovation and partnership,” Google wrote on its FAQ page announcing the decision. The company will continue to support the phased-out Enterprise Edition through September, according to CNN Business.

Google did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Google’s decision to discontinue the product comes amid cost reductions across the company. Like many of its peers, Google recently announced plans to lay off thousands of people in response to fears of recession and changing pandemic demand for digital products.

Yet the dream of Google Glass lives on. Snapchat’s parent company sells Spectacles, another set of smart glasses that has struggled over the years to gain traction. CNN Business said Apple will be working on augmented reality glasses. And even after the Glass setback, Google said last year that it was still testing other AR glasses.

“Augmented reality (AR) opens up new ways to interact with the world around us,” the company said in a blog post last summer. “It can help us quickly and easily access the information we need, like understanding another language or knowing how to best get from point A to point B.”

(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)