Google is one of the leading technology companies right now, but even it can make big mistakes and admit to them. One of Google’s most notable failures was the much talked about Google Glass project that was seen as the next step in mobile computing.
Astro Teller, the lead scientist at Google X, who is also known as “Captain Moonshot”, stated at the South by Southwest stage in Austin that the search giant made too much of a big deal about Google Glass. Apparently, the hype was too much and many users thought what they had was close to the finished product.
“I don’t believe a mistake-free learning environment exists,” Teller said, according to a report from ABC News. “Failures are cheap if you do them first. Failures are expensive if you do them at the end.”
Glass was such a failure that the company ceased production in January of this year. It means that for now, no one is sure where the technology will end up next, and if Google plans to go forward with the same product but a new plan.
For those who are unaware, Glass was first announced in 2012, and from there, Google chose to sell prototypes for $1500 each. Several publications reported the device to be the next big thing, while companies like Sony decided to follow with their own version, thinking Google was slowly carving a new market from scratch.
“We did things that encouraged people think this was a finished product. We could have done a better job of communicating that [but] I’m sorry about those bumps and scrapes,” Teller said.
While we do not see how Google made anyone believe a prototype was even close to being a finished product, we do think the company needed to communicate more. Up to this point, many folks have no idea what Google Glass was all about, and if it could change the way we do things.
Google will have to come better next time around, because Microsoft has revealed its own take with HoloLens, and the software giant has been surprising crystal clear what it aims to achieve.
Source: [ABC News]
