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Comment by hswolff | Hacker News Reader

>“We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input,” the three employees wrote. “Please follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?”

Why would you ask that? This type of product is so different from what's available on the market that I doubt the Project Glass team would receive any type of suggestions they'd find useful.

That would be like Apple asking people "What do you want the iPhone to do?" before it was first released in 2007.

If you're creating the product, create it. Find the features you want it to have and research the features it needs to have. Asking the public "what do you want it to have" will not do anyone any favors. Decision by committee can be truly atrocious.

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From a marketing perspective, it's a greater blunder still: asking people to think about what they'd want Glass to do it will quickly set expectations well beyond what's technologically feasible for an initial product. That and the wishful concept video almost guarantee the initial product will be a disappointment. And that's a damn shame, because given Google's talent, it'll nevertheless be a engineering feat of epic proportion.

That said, perhaps Google doesn't care about releasing perfectly marketed hit products a la Apple. If wearable computers catch on that make it easier to check-in to the places you go and +1 the stuff you like, they'll make tons more money from useful targeted ads than units of hardware shipped, just as they do now.

"And that's a damn shame, because given Google's talent, it'll nevertheless be a engineering feat of epic proportion."

You know, I have respect for the people Google employs - they are certainly a very talented bunch. But what has Google ever engineered, at least physically, that has set your expectations so high?

I think the technical infrastructure they've built to support Youtube, Google Search, and the rest of their products is a modern technological marvel, and that was designed 100% in-house as far as I know.

I don't think they've developed a physical consumer product that is revolutionary, but I believe they have the talent to do so.

Everything I've heard about the self driving car gets me more excited than Search ever did. But then again I've never seen it.

But what has Google ever engineered, at least physically, that has set your expectations so high?

Driverless cars.

Quite so! I'm very excited to head on down to my Google dealership and pick one--

Oh.

There's a huge difference between a research project and a shipping product. I'm most excited for this development as well, but I'll be withholding my acclaim until they actually deliver it. So far, all of this stuff is an elaborate Montessori school science project.

If you've followed the DARPA Grand Challenge since 2004, you'll realize that it's _not_ just a school science project. The Google car is going to be ready for market far before the legal, insurance, and other non-technical issues are sorted out.

In other words, they could ship "now" if they weren't doing such a revolutionary product. If you make a trivially incremental improvement on an already-existing product (iPad3) then that's a lot easier

That still sounds silly. If you have the muscle of Google, wouldn't you get the legal ball rolling first, so that when your car is ready, you can sell immediately?

Does a driverless car even count as basic research that they can spin off into a consumer product?

Which they did. Nevada now has laws governing autonomously piloted cars, and California is working on it, last I checked.

If they can get such vehicles legal and available to the general public in California, it will be legal everywhere else within a year or two at most. California sets or has had the ability to set a lot of standards for the country, from vehicle emissions, textbooks, to now, apparently, driverless cars.

I think you're simplifying a little.

A driverless car is not just another car. It's not a fancy smartphone. It's a paradigm shift that will reshape society and erase tens of thousands of jobs in a relatively short timeframe. And it's one of the rare cases where you can actually predict and quantify these consequences with relatively good accuracy.

I'd assume quite a few parties (read: all of them) will want to have a say in such a rollout, beyond technical peculiarities. For the better or the worse.

ISTR people saying that about the Segway.

You're not seriously comparing the segway to driverless vehicles?

Nah, I'm just comparing that bit of hyperbole.

Like the "paradigm shift" that was to be the Segway, what problem does this solve exactly?

40,000 deaths annually due to driver error

Also: Cost of human labor in logistics. Driverless cars don't need sleep.

Driverless cars would more or less kill an entire job category overnight. Who wouldn't want a truck driver that doesn't make wrong turns, doesn't get distracted, forget to gas up, doesn't need to sleep, eat, or be paid (as much)?

Don't forget: Offloading almost all freight traffic that can't be done by rail to automated vehicles between 1-6am daily.

Airplanes fly constantly, because each second they're on the ground is a second they're not paying for their capital cost. Ever see how barren a 6 lane highway is at 3am in the morning on a weeknight?

Exactly, robots aren't constrained by a need for sleep; and is likely more aware of it's surroundings vs. a human facing the same conditions. A driverless car can "see" in infrared or radar just as easily as it can visible light (potentially better).

The challenges in getting a driverless car to market will take years to over come. lsiebert replied that a few states are already thinking about this. We'll see how that turns out.

In the mean time, isn't it prudent to have intermediate products? Products to help people get used to the idea of driverless vehicles? Products to give them experience on how to rollout their bigger vision?

That's the problem with the google boys, they're a one hit wonder. They lucked out with search, a research project, and now they think they know what they're doing. They need to take their bozo hat off and realize they need to partner with the rest of the world to get stuff done. Apple's success is not just due to Job's taste but also extensive ties with chinese manufacturers and real focused hard work. A "secret" X lair in the second most expensive city in america ain't gonna cut it.

That's they problem with google, they still haven't figured out they're a one hit wonder, real business is much harder edged than the "playtime" for kids that goes on there.

> That's the problem with the google boys, they're a one hit wonder.

You don't consider GMail, their dominance in ads, Android's ubiquity, the YouTube acquisition, etc as successes? Because all of those seem to have improved vastly since Google took control of them.

Given that Google is not about search anymore but about Google all those acquisitions make sense. Now Google totally controls the biggest assets online (not counting facebook). They could also know as much now as they would like to know about you to give them, data-wise, more than just a controlling position online. So the seperate entities don't even have to be profitable if they generate enough data exhaust for the mothership (what they clearly do).

Google is not just about data collection, though data collection does help improve products (think distributed spam filtering). Most Google products exist because someone at Google thought people would like them. Making money is good, but not a primary concern. It seems crazy from the outside, but really, developers at Google are not sitting around trying to figure out how to build a huge and scary profile about you. We just want to play with fun things.

(Yes, that generates a lot of data, and we do use a lot of that data for things that might not thrill you, like targeting ads. But ultimately, a lot of companies know a lot about you, and few try to be as transparent about it as Google does. At least you can stop giving Google data. Try to opt out of the credit reporting system.)

Google has a competitive edge in search because of it's data. All their other so-called successes are based directly off that (either in user share or because they have the big bucks to bankroll it).

Take a look at other tech companies, they've created fortunes based on almost nothing

* apple, consumer electronics that anyone could do

* amazon, selling stuff online that anyone could do

* oracle, selling databases when their competition includes ibm and even free software

Youtube should have been itunes, amazon instant, netflix, hulu all rolled in one. But they're not, because they don't actually know how to do business - one hit wonder.

Another example, google, until recently, had no lobbyists - why on earth would you do that? (when you have enough piles of cash to buy ountries). Investors should be filing lawsuits for this reason alone.

Another example of business cluelessness, they're not flexing their patent muscles.

Android ubiquity - linux is ubiquitous too, far more so - hint, it's FREE. Not very hard to give away free stuff.

Another example of business cluelessness, they're not flexing their patent muscles.

It's worth noting that Google's prospectus [1] as filed with the SEC says that Google will always pursue long-term opportunities even if they hurt Google in the short term. Patents are an example here; Google could sue all of its "competitors" out of existence today, but would that really benefit Google in the long term? Would you work at Google if they were the company that put every tech startup out of business with "method for computing the sum of two integer" patents? Probably not. So aggressive patent lawsuits are not what Google's shareholders want. And doing what the shareholders want is not exactly "business cluelessness" :)

[1] http://www.buec.udel.edu/pollacks/Acct351/handouts/SEC%20For...

Remember Communicating with Care?

You might want to go review that. Or just stop posting so much about Google altogether.

So you're saying it's careless to respond to comments on the Internet?

I'm saying that speculating about what Google can and cannot do to competitors in public is definitely not Communicating with Care, and that your comment history is littered with borderline cases like this one. Just stop.

Further, you don't actually need to respond to every stupid, incorrect statement on the Internet that's written about your new employer. Really.

I see where you're coming from. Why do you have to use a misspelled throwaway account to say this, though?

(Ultimately, I see the risk in saying "I think XXX" if Google decides to someday do the opposite of XXX. But there is some limit; I'm still going to say that writing unit tests is good even if Google's official message to investors becomes "testing is a waste of time". That's because I'm me, and I have my own opinions. If Google wants to make an official statement, they have a blog for that. If someone wants to misconstrue a personal opinion of mine as an official statement, well... let's just say that their Pulitzer hopes may be dashed...)

If they're borderline report him and let whomever take care of it. Best case scenario here is that you're not only a hypocrite but one who feels the need to say things he considers so bombastic it requires hiding behind a throwaway account.

By the way, his email address is in his profile. If you were really that concerned about "communicating with care" you could be a professional about it and mention it privately to him. Of course, that wouldn't satisfy your need to respond to every stupid, incorrect statement he makes about his new employer, really.

>Another example of business cluelessness, they're not flexing their patent muscles.

A business with a basic sense of decency... imagine that.

Android was an acquisition....

Yes, 7 years ago, before they were well known. It seems a bit disingenuous to not give Google credit for Android as a success. They didn't initially create it, but they did shape it into a success.

Mountain View is the second most expensive city in the country? I wonder where LA and Chicago rank...

Google Street Map cars, then.

You want to pick nits over Google being able to ship?

That's not a consumer product, dude.

Driverless cars. Google Glasses.

The CEO's job is to allocate resources to initiatives that will make the company money. NOT to fool around with worthless projects like driver less cars and glasses that are just complete waste of money and resources.

Shouldn't they be spending time and money fixing Android and the Android market place?

The car business is fantastically large. If Google can license its technology to power the next stage of personal transportation, the revenue received will dwarf its 30% vig on selling Angry Birds.

Either way, it's not that they are taking money and resources from Android and dedicating them to cars and augmented reality. I don't think more money and more people is what Android needs.

If they were man enough to actually license. I recently say sebastian thrun speaking and he turns investor off. Hand a professor a cheque and he'll hand you a pipe dream. Google needs to be hiring more wall street sharks.

There are plenty of Wall Street types at Google, the last thing they need is to have them in control of innovation. The scientists won't be in charge of sales or licensing, I think it's great that the MBAs aren't in charge of product development.

Maybe Google won't license it, maybe Google will give it away like they do Android. Since I don't see them manufacturing cars, those are about the only options other than canceling the effort.

Can't tell if you're joking.

The only joke here is Google.

You are correct that "The CEO's job is to allocate resources to initiatives that will make the company money" and with driverless cars and google glasses the CEO is doing exactly that.

Also people working on these projects are scientists at googleX they are completely different from the Android team ... Google has enough resources (people and money) to pursue these long term research project without hurting their short term business too much.

> You are correct that "The CEO's job is to allocate resources to initiatives that will make the company money"

Actually that's not strictly true. The CEO's job is to satisfy the shareholders/board of directors. Normally that coincides with making the company money, but not always - the idea of a legal duty to maximise share value is a widely held myth. In the case of Google, most of the shares are still held by the founders. If they just want the company to do cool and impractical things they have the right and the capacity to make it do so.

The effect of a driverless car isn't necessarily that it drives itself. It's a car that's aware of its surroundings and provides feedback to the driver. Mercedes already implemented collision avoidance, driverless car can potentially prevent running over curbs, pedestrians or provide better control. In any case, lack of innovation is a pretty easy way eventually lose ground.

A lot of people would argue that a CEO's job is to innovate and that profit is just a means. Starting a company (and making yourself CEO) doesn't mean you have to change your priorities from improving the world to increasing your annual return. Lots of world-changing technology has financial gains that aren't realized for years. As long as you have enough money in the short term, which Google does, you can afford such R&D. I can't imagine the inventions at Bell Labs were profitable in the short term, but we wouldn't be typing posts on HN if they didn't exist. Do you think expensive technological innovation should be relegated to the government? Who do you trust to get us to Mars first, NASA or companies like SpaceX?

Thanks to a number of wars and billions being pumped into the UAV market, the likes of Raytheon, Thales Optronics, FLIR Systems, ITT, BAE, IAI, and probably a hundred other companies have made self driving cars possible. Not Google.

Even when I was working on autonomous vehicles 10+ years ago, the entire setup was basically a "solved problem" minus environmental sensing accurate and reliable enough to be put in the critical path of human life. The state machine for how to behave on paved roads has existed in various forms for a long time.

They have however put money and legal weight behind the problem. If Google deserves credit for anything, it would be getting them allowed on public streets.

UAV control has basically nothing to do with self-driving cars. It's a completely different problem. The only piece that's shared is the GPS/IMU, and it's a small piece. And if you think "the state machine for how to behave on paved roads" is the hard part, you're delusional.

"Environmental sensing accurate and reliable enough" isn't the problem either. Although fancy lasers and radars can help, we have had cameras, microphones, and accelerometers superior to human eyes, ears, and vestibular system for years now. The missing piece is the software, which is exactly the piece Google is working on.

Sorry for the confusing use of the term. UAV means unmanned autonomous vehicles. UAV in reference to aerial platforms is mostly the result of marketing/media.

Even the early Daimler-Benz projects of the 90's had fully functional software stacks that had implemented all the required decision making logic of driving.

While it is true that we have cameras and microphones that work better than our own eyes and ears, I don't think anyone would dispute the fact that the sensory processing isn't to human levels yet. The advancements that have been made are in different types of sensing devices that eliminate the need for heavy post-processing of data (image pattern recognition, etc) in software.

I do give credit to Google for making it happen, both as an integrator, and in lobbying efforts. But there is a lot of standing on the shoulders of giants, in comparison to pure software fields where they have made huge industry disrupting shifts (like BigTable, GFS, etc).

I don't think anyone would dispute the fact that the sensory processing isn't to human levels yet

And that's the exact problem Google is working on, and where all previous efforts have failed miserably, no matter how good their "rules of the road" state machines were in theory. Saying Daimler-Benz solved autonomous driving years ago is like saying SHRDLU solved natural language processing.

The advancements that have been made are in different types of sensing devices that eliminate the need for heavy post-processing of data

There are exactly two new kinds of sensing devices used on the Google cars AFAIK: small automotive radars and the Velodyne spinning LIDAR. The latter owes its existence not to giant defense contractors or car manufacturers but to a small loudspeaker company, of all things. Furthermore, it absolutely does not eliminate the need for heavy post-processing of data.

I think we could start putting self driving cars on the road today that would lower both the number of fatality's and accidents. We don't need more processing power, better sensors, or lower costs. What we need is slightly better software and the willingness to put it into production.

After-all the 'worst case' in a car is basically solved 99.9% of the time by staying in the correct lane, obeying stop lights / signs, speed limits, and simply hitting the breaks if your going to hit something. Sure, you could improve on that, but get that to work reliably and your already doing better than human drivers, who get distracted, drunk, tired, impatient, angry, and just plain overwhelmed.

Well, I guess "autonomous vehicles" were a solved problem the same way "portable music devices" or "smart phones" or "Tablet Computers" were a solved problem. But it takes _someone_ to push the concept over and move the category forward.

In all three categories (particularly portable music devices) - I would argue that Apple didn't so much as make the technology possible, as it did make them _popular_.

Likewise, with a autonomous vehicle - it isn't so much building a car that can drive itself - it's making a car that can drive itself _that I can buy_ that I get excited about.

Of course, Google has yet to deliver on the part about me buying them - but can you identify any other company that has done so much to get them driving on roads _with other people_?

Could your "solved problem" vehicles reliably tell the difference between a kid running into the street and a empty garbage bag blown in the wind?

If you designed the system, would you handle them any differently?

A buddy of mine, when he was a kid, used to tie toilet paper across the road at windshield height then hide in the bushes. A car would come along at ~30 mph, see it, then come to a screeching halt. Some would get out and tear it down, some would stomp the gas. Point is, every human stopped for a single strand of toilet paper blocking the road.

Perhaps on a 30 mph residential street in light traffic.

Screeching halts have a different effect at higher speeds in denser traffic. People would be less likely to slam on the brakes for a trash bag on the freeway.

But either way it is a dangerous, controversial, split second, human risk calculation. I can't say how I would handle it in advance, much less how a robot car should be programmed to handle ambiguous inputs at highway speed.

I would posit that the secret sauce is the integration of Google maps and street views. The driverless car isnt just reacting to its sensor inputs, it has a pretty good idea of what is coming up including potential problems.

"The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference but in practice, there is" -- numerous possible sources

I wonder if Google will end up going the same route as Philips.

I'm from the home-town of Philips, the company that became big selling light-bulbs but then expanded into a myriad of great technical innovations.

We were always joking however about how they were able to make the greatest products, but were never able to sell them.

There are so many examples of absolutely great products/innovations which were eventually canned or, if they weren't IP protected, were successfully released to market several years later by a competitor.

I really hope Google doesn't fall into this trap, because the even the greatest still need to be sold...

>If wearable computers catch on that make it easier to check-in to the places you go and +1 the stuff you like, they'll make tons more money from useful targeted ads than units of hardware shipped, just as they do now.

I expect that they have patented "location based XYZ implemented by wearable computing devices" up the wazoo before this announcement. Even if Google Glass doesn't become the market leader, they're set to reap its rewards in more ways than one.

Why would you ask that?

Did you hear about how Google dogfooded Google+ for months, and when it was released to the public, people used it entirely differently than they had used it internally?

It seems to me that Google is so stuck in the mindset of "Release a Beta, assess the adoption, iteratively improve" that they don't know how to make a product that people will actually want from the start.

Chrome took a while to be adopted because everyone was still stuck with useful extensions in other browsers. Wave had neat interaction, but failed the adoption hypothesis. Google+ correctly assumed the need for a sharing-centric network to replace Facebook, but botched the actual social aspect of it.

Google is the polar opposite of Apple in this regard. They need to learn to keep things under wraps and understand the userbase for the product before it actually reaches them. In the case of Google+, for instance, it's impossible to change the sharing mechanism that has been there from the start, as fundamentally flawed as it may be.

I don't see why everyone should seek to emulate Apple, it's the antithesis of the Valley mentality. Everyone else goes for openness, iteration, and lean mentality, not stealth and secrecy, it rarely works.

You can't always design products from the top down. Sometimes you have to run actual experiments and collect data. The Apple aura that they can sit in an ivory tower and perfectly craft things that everyone wants will fade away the first time they release a product that bombs.

Right now, they are successful, so everyone says go emulate them. That's a shortsighted MBA mentality, that there's this formula for success, and you just need to emulate the practices of others.

Apple creates bombs all the time: the G4 Cube, iPod Socks, iPod Hi-Fi, iAds. They create enough other things that don't bomb to make up for it.

But you're right that Apple's way is only one way, and it's non-obvious how to go about replicating their processes even if you wanted to.

If anything should be learned from Apple, it's every aspect of the experience should be considered part of the product, including anticipation and expectations. That can mean a big media event unveiling a top-secret project, or it can mean launching a developer wiki before the product is even finished. Either way, managing the experiences of your customers, even pre-purchase, is part of the job.

I think Apple's hype machine however can also lead to problems, because it can raise expectations so high that nothing they release can match it. You're already starting to see some of that. With both the iPad and iPhone, Apple is mostly just doing refinements now: change the radio, bump the screen res, bump the CPU clock. It's not disruptive or revolutionary anymore, it's just evolution.

You're already starting to see some of that now. Building excitement is great, but if you over do it, people will be disappointed.

This seems like a perfect example of overhype. Without tangible details about the device and it's actual capabilities, we are left to wonder what is possible, and many of us will be let down since you can't pack a thousand features into the glasses.

I highly doubt they will "pack features into the glasses". If I were to guess, they will pack them into a smartphone platform which communicates with the glasses over bluetooth. That is, the glasses will be a peripheral of the smartphone.

Also, nothing they showed was very exotic. Google already has walking navigation. Google already has Hangouts, Screen Sharing. Google already has Goggles image recognition. The only 'sci fi' element was the always-on microphone handling Siri-like queries. They could have showed a lot more crazy stuff: face detection, augmented reality tracking, augmented reality games. They didn't show anything that isn't technically possibly to achieve. It's rather mundane if you think about the features they showed as applications on your phone instead of displayed on your eye glasses. The only thing different is the input/output device.

Apple announced the iPhone 6 months before you could buy it. The initial version didn't do much beside fixed functions and Web browsing. It wasn't until the App Economy that it's potential was unlocked. People speculated for months about app development only to be told much much later that there was none. People speculated over flash. Over Java support. MMS messaging. In fact, I have an old post from 2007 exactly discussing all of this naysaying due to speculation: http://cromwellian.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

I think Google has actually put forward a very pragmatic concept video that is fully realizable, albeit with latencies and delays and voice recognition accuracies that don't quite match up to the real world (but even Apple commercials show apps serving up answers faster than they do in reality)

Apple has no hype machine. The machine is created and operated by media, pundits and so-called experts and analysts. This probably helps Apple more than hurts, but the company gets some bad press just because someone dreamt up what will Cupertino release and then feel cheated when cancer-curing-iPhone-GazillionS does not show up.

And you are right about refinements. There is a nice piece just about that: http://tidbits.com/article/12856

Typical Google. Treating what should be platforms like products and treating what should be products like platforms.

Are you saying they should license this technology to Samsung and others? If that's the case, I disagree. This is Google's chance to increase their profits and market cap three fold and within a few years, if this product turns out as exciting as it seems to be right now.

Considering the number of failed Google services, I think it's plausible to consider more "open" products to have a bigger opportunity for growth and popularity. Allowing third party developers to do their own thing with the product would remove Google's sluggishness as a factor for avoiding the device.

This is a great point. In the Project Glass video all of the products are Google's. Imagine if, instead of a product, the Google glasses were an open platform for AR like Android is for smartphones. If this were so, Google could create a new app store for AR applications, a new distribution platform for web searches, AR open web apps, and (maybe) a first-person version of YouTube (reality TV 3.0). This platform would mobilize the development community and deter some companies from building apps for the iPhone (if delivery on the Google Glass platform would be more convenient).

As a developer who is working on a product that's very well suited to take advantage of this product I'm very ashamed of Google's lack of third-party developer involvement and business vision. Sure the product looks great, but is not solely about products; it's about people, about delivering value for customers the world over. And the full value of this product would only be realized if Google takes a platform approach, opens up the ecosystem and lets everybody in (including, and, especially Facebook).

Summary of the good things I saw in the demo:

- Very clean user interface

- Nice hardware design

- Interesting functionalities

- Nice integration with Google products

- Slick animations

- Seems to be pretty fast

Initial concerns:

- Video calls in version one? What about battery life? Sometimes is better to keep some things out on first iterations

- No hints to integrations with other platforms

- Too much use of voice (we all know the state of the art in voice recognition and how long voice processing currently takes)

- I didn't see a single Web search in the video... how come?

All and all this is a VERY promising product and a very important one for the whole industry. I hope Google opens up this platform so that it can reach all the momentum and followers it deserves.

Does webpage searching really have much relevance to AR? A lot of useful services for this application are on different platforms like twitter, facebook, chat, video, maps. I don't think this AR will/should be text-heavy.

Who said anything about searching text?

The bulk of information that resides in social networks is "conversational". Publicly accessible human knowledge about places (such as historic facts, meetups, etc) still resides, for the most part, in the open Web.

Connect to the open Web (with a powerful summarization technology) would be a killer on this platform. Otherwise we would we reinventing the wheel.

Agree with most of the above, but as regards an open platform, don't forget that the iPhone didn't initially have an app store at all.

I think it might take a while of having people walking around with an initial, closed version for the truly novel and exciting obvious to really become obvious.

It will probably be a 'dumb' accessory - using bluetooth to offload most of the processing to an android device - at least, in the first version.

Is there any indication that there won't be Apps available for these glasses? I don't think so.

At any rate, the counter argument is that opening it up to 3rd party developers means letting people shit up your field of vision with ads, which might not be so cool.

They ask it because they have a cool product but don't know how to use it. I doubt it will be used the way they promote it, this is cool stuff you come up with when you are brainstorming with some friends + beer but when you think about it, it doesn't improve your life, it adds noise.

In different areas however it could be a big improvement, if you are repairing stuff with no hands free in a dimly lit area and you need info from a manual or you want others to see what you see and help you.

Some people see the infinite possibilities to what Google is doing.

While others see only what's wrong to what Google is doing.

If I wanted infinite possibilities, I'd go outside. I pay companies to narrow out the nearly-infinite shitty possibilities and provide a useful grouping of the remainder.

Innovative products from companies are more than "fold" or "reduce" operations.

If Google is smart, they would keep this for themselves, and sell the hardware themselves for a nice Apple-like profit. From the way it looks, I'm sure people will be more than happy to pay a bit extra - especially if it takes a few years for others to catch-up, like it happened versus the iPhone.

Also, I assume this is going to work with a data plan as well? Well at least this time I really hope Google will not give in to carriers, and compromise on nothing. Don't give carriers the power Google. When this product becomes extremely successful, as I believe it will become, they will be begging you to sell it on their network. Although I'd probably prefer something like the former Nexus store, that intended to commoditize carriers, rather than give them exclusives.

Google and Apple have fundamentally different business models. One sells hardware and one sells advertising. I would imagine Google's goal will be to put these glasses on as many people as they can, as cheaply as they can and then they have a direct advertising connection to a lot of eyeballs.

I believe Google has higher ambitions than selling advertising for the next 3 decades. They didn't buy Motorola just for patents, and to me they seem to be increasingly more interested in the physical world. I don't think it's a stretch to think that they want to make and sell physical products.

Yeah, the more I think about these glasses the more the Motorola acquisition makes sense. If you look at some of the products Motorola makes, eg:

http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and...

You can see it is a fairly short leap to producing all manner of interesting hardware, including AR glasses. I think Google is starting to realise that so many of their ventures are getting stymied by depending on 3rd parties for hardware that it's eventually going to be a threat to their core mission (organizing information, etc.) I bet they've had high level talks with OEMs about things like this and always get frustrated by the low margins they operate on and the need to reap immediate profits for anything to happen.

I think this Motorola product is even more relevant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden-i

.. making the term "selling eyeballs" just a _little_ bit more accurate.

I think I understand the motivation behind your comment and I'd agree to some extent, but designers still have the mantra that users need to be involved in the process of design. For some design practitioners, it's maybe ensuring that designers write personas and scenarios for different types of users or engage in narrative-based design exercises, or even (if you're the right sort of weirdo) participatory design.

I honestly have no idea what stage this project is in. Are they in a phase that's more ideation? Are they refining in their design funnel? I think it's a bit curious to point at an example of a product by one company and say essentially 'They did it this way and were successful, clearly this is how all things should be designed'.

I'm not sure this is an issue of them asking a question analagous to "What do you want the iPhone to do?" so much as it's maybe "How annoying are people who aren't researchers and designers going to find wearing HUD glasses for 3 hours a day?" or "Will people feel uncomfortable using them in pedestrian or cycling settings given that they're voice-activated and pervasive?" Granted, there are maybe analogous products on the market that will maybe inform how people will interact with this new medium, but I have a few years experience interacting with someone using this sort of one-eyed projective displays (my former research advisor wore one) and there are some funny things involved with face to face interaction with someone using them that you might not anticipate. In fact, he felt that the eyepiece was often enough of a social interaction barrier that he'd take his off and tuck it into his shirt pocket when he was having a conversation.

You're not necessarily going to figure these things out in the product design lab. Maybe it's stupid of Google, but I suspect they're trying to better do design for the wild. Alternately, they're just people who don't know how to make products.

this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Coil

make dennu coil happen.

Sounds a lot like Rainbow's End: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End

I agree - make it happen.

Nitpick: There's no apostrophe in the title "Rainbows End". Relevant because of how much it changes the meaning.

completely off topic but you put Mitsuo Iso's name in my internal map of the universe and now an entire span of dark fog is gone.

thanks

Interesting timing. I wrote the following yesterday afternoon before they published, and yet I seem to be answering their question:

http://a1.blogspot.com/2012/04/first-app-i-want-from-new-goo...

So guess they might get a FEW good ideas :-)

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