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Comment by jdietrich | Hacker News Reader

The software was unusable, they abandoned the product in a broken state and they didn't provide source code. Whether that counts as "screwed" depends on what expectations you consider reasonable.

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But did Google ever promise Explorers stable, non-beta software when they signed up? Did they ever promise open access to the code or hardware?

I get being upset if expectations aren't met. But I just don't understand what set these expectations to begin with.

They did quite a lot of things that set expectations which they failed to meet. First, obviously, a $1500 price tag carries with it an implied level of service. But it's not just that. Early in Glass' life, they swapped all their users' hardware with a new hardware revision. But when their software increased the memory requirements beyond what their deployed hardware had in it, they didn't do a second swap. They didn't communicate the fact that they had made a closed fork of Android (which is Apache licensed); I didn't realize that until I downloaded the source packages they were offering, and discovered that it only contained the kernel (which is GPLv2) and nothing else. They set up an app store, but put restrictions in the SDK license that fell only a tiny bit short of banning app development. (Specifically, it's GPL-incompatible and also bans charging money and advertising). They offered a usable API to develop against, then broke giant pieces of it and never fixed them.

Well, they DID take $1500 of cash to join the explorer program. At least they could make it easier for someone to use the hardware if they were going to abandon it.

yes.

no matter how much they slap Beta labels on something with one hand, they drown everyone on marketing videos and press releases with the other.

and that's not just glass. that's Google overall.

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