Google Glass

Based on Wikipedia: Google Glass

The Future That Wasn't

In June 2012, four skydivers leaped from a blimp over San Francisco, each wearing a pair of futuristic glasses that livestreamed their descent to a cheering audience at the Moscone Center below. Google co-founder Sergey Brin stood on stage, watching his company's vision of the future plummet toward earth at terminal velocity. The glasses worked perfectly. The skydivers landed safely on the roof. And for one breathless moment, it seemed like we were witnessing the birth of a new era in computing.

Within three years, the whole thing would be dead.

Google Glass—those strange, slightly alien-looking spectacles with a tiny prism display hovering near your right eye—became one of the most hyped and then most mocked technology products of the 2010s. But the story of Glass isn't really about failure. It's about being too early, about the gap between what technology can do and what society is ready to accept, and about how a product designed to make us more connected somehow made everyone around us deeply uncomfortable.

The Secret Lab and the Eight-Pound Headache

Google Glass emerged from Google X, the company's semi-secret research facility where engineers worked on what Google called "moonshot" projects—technologies so ambitious they seemed closer to science fiction than product development. The same lab was simultaneously building self-driving cars, internet-beaming balloons, and contact lenses that could measure glucose levels in tears. Glass was supposed to be the breakthrough that brought augmented reality to the masses.

The early prototypes were comically impractical. In mid-2011, the first working version weighed eight pounds—roughly the same as a gallon of milk strapped to your face. Engineers spent two years refining the design until, by 2013, the glasses weighed less than an average pair of sunglasses. The transformation was remarkable: from unwearable science experiment to something that looked almost like regular eyewear, if you squinted and ignored the small rectangular prism sticking out from the frame near your right temple.

That prism was the key to the whole system. It used something called a liquid crystal on silicon display—a tiny screen that bounced polarized light through a series of beam splitters and reflectors until it reached your eye, creating the illusion of a translucent rectangle floating in your field of vision. The technical details involved P-polarization, S-polarization, and collimating reflectors, but the effect was simple: a small screen only you could see, always hovering just above your line of sight.

The Fifteen-Hundred-Dollar Lottery

Google knew it had something special, but it also knew the technology wasn't ready for a full public launch. So the company did something unusual: it created scarcity and exclusivity, turning early access into a status symbol.

In February 2013, Google invited people to compete for the chance to spend $1,500 on a prototype. The competition was simple: post to Twitter or Google Plus with the hashtag #IfIHadGlass, explaining what you would do with the technology. Eight thousand winners—dubbed "Glass Explorers"—were selected and invited to one of three "basecamps" in Los Angeles, New York, or San Francisco. There, they received fitting sessions and training from Google guides, treating the purchase of a tech gadget like the acquisition of a bespoke suit.

The marketing was brilliant. By making Glass hard to get, Google ensured that everyone who did get one felt like a pioneer, a member of an exclusive club helping to shape the future. The Explorers became evangelists, wearing their glasses everywhere and generating endless media coverage. When you saw someone wearing Glass in 2013, you knew they were either wealthy, well-connected, or both.

But there was a problem Google hadn't anticipated. Not everyone was excited to see those glasses coming.

The Glasshole Problem

The first time someone wearing Google Glass walked into a bar, the reaction was probably curiosity. By the hundredth time, it was hostility.

Google Glass had a camera. A small, 5-megapixel camera that could take photos and record 720p video with a simple voice command or tap on the touchpad. To the wearer, this was convenient—a way to capture moments without fumbling for a phone. To everyone else in the room, it was a surveillance device pointed directly at their face.

The concern wasn't hypothetical. Unlike a phone camera, which you have to visibly raise and point at someone, Glass could record without any obvious indication. The small light that turned on during recording was easy to miss or, some worried, could be disabled by hackers. You never knew if the person across from you was having a conversation or filming you for the internet.

A new word entered the lexicon: Glasshole. It described the worst kind of Glass wearer—someone oblivious to social norms, recording everything, checking notifications mid-conversation, generally treating every human interaction as content to be captured and broadcast. Whether or not most Glass users behaved this way, the perception stuck.

Bars and restaurants began banning Glass. Movie theaters worried about piracy. Casinos saw a cheating device. Privacy advocates sounded alarms. In San Francisco—the most tech-friendly city in America—a woman was physically assaulted for wearing Glass in a bar. The device meant to connect us to the future was turning its wearers into social pariahs.

Doctors and Their Magical Eyes

While Glass stumbled in the consumer market, something unexpected was happening in hospitals and clinics. Doctors loved it.

The first surgical use of Google Glass came on June 20, 2013, when Rafael J. Grossmann, a Venezuelan doctor practicing in the United States, wore the device during a live procedure. Just two months later, surgeon Christopher Kaeding at Ohio State University used Glass to consult with a colleague while operating, with medical students watching remotely on their laptops. After the surgery, Kaeding remarked that he often forgot the device was there—it felt intuitive and seamless.

The medical applications multiplied rapidly. A company called Augmedix developed an app that let physicians livestream patient visits to remote scribes who would transcribe the encounters in real time. This sounds minor, but it addressed one of the biggest frustrations in modern medicine: the electronic health record. Doctors increasingly spent their appointments staring at computer screens, typing notes, with their backs to patients. Glass promised to let them maintain eye contact while still capturing everything they needed.

Lucien Engelen, a researcher at Radboud University in the Netherlands, became the first European healthcare professional in the Glass Explorer program. He tested the device everywhere: operating rooms, ambulances, trauma helicopters, general practice offices, and home care visits. He documented procedures, streamed surgeries to remote students, and dictated notes hands-free. In Australia, a startup created a Glass application for breastfeeding mothers that let them video-call lactation consultants while keeping both hands free to hold their babies.

Perhaps most remarkably, doctors at Johns Hopkins University demonstrated that Glass could photograph a patient's retina—the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye—well enough for diagnostic purposes. Interventional radiologists showed it could assist with liver biopsies and other procedures. Neurosurgeons at Columbia University catalogued applications from telemedicine to rapid diagnostic test analysis.

The same device that made restaurant patrons uncomfortable was transforming how doctors could care for their patients.

The Pivot No One Saw Coming

On January 15, 2015, Google announced it would stop producing the consumer version of Glass. The Explorer program was over. The dream of Glass on every face was dead.

Reports emerged that former Apple executive Tony Fadell—the man who had helped create the iPod and founded the smart thermostat company Nest—was now in charge of redesigning Glass. It wouldn't return, he said, until it was "perfect." That consumer version never came.

But Glass didn't actually die. It just went where it was wanted.

In July 2017, Google quietly released the Glass Enterprise Edition. This version had been testing for years in factories at Boeing, General Electric, and other industrial giants. Workers on assembly lines wore them to see instructions overlaid on their field of vision, keeping their hands free for the actual work. The new edition featured an improved camera, longer battery life, and a more robust design suited for factory conditions.

The same technology that felt invasive at a dinner party made perfect sense in a factory. Nobody worried about privacy on an assembly line. Nobody called warehouse workers "Glassholes" for looking up inventory information hands-free. In industrial settings, the glasses were simply useful tools, no different from safety goggles or work gloves.

In 2019, Google released the Enterprise Edition 2, along with a partnership with Smith Optics to develop Glass-compatible safety frames. The technology kept improving, finding its niche far from the consumer spotlight that had briefly illuminated it.

What Glass Actually Was

To understand why Glass failed with consumers but succeeded with factory workers and doctors, you need to understand what the device actually did.

At its core, Glass was a smartphone for your face. It had a touchpad on the side—run your finger along it to scroll through a timeline interface showing weather, notifications, and recent activity. It responded to voice commands: say "O.K., Glass" to wake it up, then "Take a picture" or "Record a video" or "Give me directions to the Eiffel Tower." When it read information back to you, it used bone conduction—a transducer pressed against your skull that vibrated sound directly into your inner ear, so quietly that others nearby couldn't hear.

Google released an application programming interface called Mirror API in March 2013, letting outside developers create what they called "Glassware." Evernote made a notes app. The New York Times made a news app. CNN sent alerts. Strava tracked exercise. A cooking app called AllTheCooks displayed recipes hands-free. Facebook and Twitter integration let you share to social networks. Translation services used the camera to read foreign text and overlay translations in your field of vision.

A companion smartphone app called MyGlass let users configure their device. Google Maps provided navigation. Gmail showed your messages. For a while, Google kept adding features and partnerships—TripIt for travelers, Foursquare for recommendations, OpenTable for restaurant reservations. In 2014, someone even published the first book designed to be read with Google Glass, debuting at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

All of this functionality was genuinely useful. The problem was never the technology itself.

The Social Contract We Didn't Know We Had

When smartphones first became ubiquitous, we collectively negotiated new social norms. It became acceptable to check your phone at the table, but not during a conversation. You could text in a meeting, but not obviously. Recording someone required either their consent or at least their awareness—the raised phone was a social signal that gave the recorded person a chance to object.

Glass obliterated these careful negotiations. The device was always there, always on your face, always potentially watching. There was no moment where you "took out" your Glass—it was simply part of you. The social signals that let people manage their own privacy disappeared.

This wasn't a solvable technical problem. Google could have added a bright recording light. They could have made the camera less capable. But the fundamental issue was that Glass externalized a computer's attention outward, toward others, in a way that felt predatory even when it wasn't. A smartphone looks at its owner. Glass looked at everyone else.

The factory floor solved this problem by eliminating it. Workers weren't there to socialize; they were there to work. Patients in hospitals had already surrendered significant privacy to receive medical care. In contexts where constant observation was already expected or accepted, Glass added capability without adding discomfort.

The Ghosts of Glass

More than a decade after those skydivers jumped from a blimp, the consumer market for face computers remains small. Meta has released smart glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban. Apple shipped its Vision Pro headset to decidedly mixed reviews. Startups continue chasing the dream of truly unobtrusive augmented reality.

Google itself eventually returned to the space. In late 2024, the company announced Android XR, an operating system designed to power both headsets and smart glasses. The journey that started with Glass was continuing, even if Glass itself was gone.

The Enterprise Edition's sales were finally suspended in March 2023, ending the last official chapter of the Glass story. But its influence persists. Every time a surgeon live-streams a procedure for remote students, every time a factory worker reads assembly instructions overlaid on their view of the machine, every time someone develops an augmented reality application for industrial use—they're building on foundations that Glass helped establish.

Google Glass wasn't a failure, exactly. It was a prophecy delivered too soon, to an audience not ready to receive it. The technology worked. The applications were real. The problems it solved were genuine. It just asked too much of a society still learning to live with the devices already in its pockets.

Those skydivers landed safely that day in 2012, their descent captured and broadcast to the world. The technology delivered on its promise. What nobody could have predicted was that showing everyone what the future looked like would make so many people decide they didn't want it—at least, not yet.