"We have this cool thing, but we're not sure were it's most applicable. Lets just put it out in the world and see what people do with it!"
Which is what they did. The data they gained from that experiment no doubt led to this.
It's easy to forget how hard Google pushed Glass to consumers. They parachuted people out of a helicopter onto the roof of the Moscone Center wearing them. They invested a vast amount of money building out massive floating barges to use as showrooms, which they quietly mothballed and sold. They allowed Robert Scoble to take a picture of himself in the shower with one (some might say this was the worst crime of all).
If Google wanted to "just put it out in the world" they wouldn't have invested so much money in their consumer push. Now that I think about it, that Google I/O in 2012 was a bit of a disaster all around for consumer hardware, because it had both the Glass and the Nexus Q. At least Glass actually shipped.
Robert Scoble is not really a consumer tech reporter either. He's more like a futurist. Most of the things he likes to talk about are things you can't buy.
Maybe because you got marketed to you are thinking it was consumer marketing, but consider that you were being marketed to as a developer not a consumer.
Similarly:
http://www.vogue.com/article/the-final-frontier-google-glass... http://www.vogue.com/article/fka-twigs-throughglass-google-g...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/technology/biggest-eyewea...