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Comment by Irregardless | Hacker News Reader

So we can expect a bunch of half-assed software with no support? Awesome.

At least with paid apps we have a reasonable expectation of customer service and timely updates. Google's customer service is largely nonexistent, which they justify by pointing out that their products are "free". Even with products like the Nexus 4, their support was awful [1]. Simple things like updating order statuses were somehow far beyond their capabilities. With free software and Google hardware, I can't even imagine the nightmare one would have to endure to get help resolving a Glass issue.

[1] http://phandroid.com/2012/11/19/nexus-4-fatal-flaw-google-cu...

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To provide some anecdotal defense of Google here, my Nexus 4 was damaged and required replacement. I called a phone number that was easy to find on the Play Store website and spoke to a human without being placed on hold for longer than a few seconds. The human listened attentively to my problem, and promptly issued instructions for their RMA process. I had my replacement phone two days later.

As a consumer of Google's software - as both a developer and end-user - I have experienced Google's legendarily bad customer support first hand. Having said that, I think it is an injustice to suggest that it applies to all things Google now and in the future, and I have a first hand experience that suggests that they are trying to improve this experience for consumers of at least some of their products.

That's good to hear -- I own the previous Nexus and skipped the Nexus 4 mostly because of the customer service complaints. Still, it will take a lot more stories like yours to repair that aspect of their reputation, especially for people (like me) who highly value customer service and don't buy anything without a warranty.

Also, that doesn't address the other side of the problem, which is the potential lack of support from Glass application developers. What happens when Glass OS 2.0 is released and half your favorite apps break but the devs have no incentive to update them? This has happened to me several times even with paid apps in the Android store, where the devs have actual cash motivating them to get an update out quickly.

It's a little naive on Google's part to assume people will create AND maintain tons of useful, quality applications just out of sheer enjoyment or the goodness of their hearts.

Well, considering that they're free and you're on the bleeding knife's edge of technology, I wouldn't want anything mission critical to be reliant on Glass apps.

> It's a little naive on Google's part to assume people will create AND maintain tons of useful, quality applications just out of sheer enjoyment or the goodness of their hearts.

Google doesn't assume that. Google knows that Glass's feature set is only useful to provide auxiliary functionality for multi-device services, and they expect that users experience will be better if you pay for the multidevice service but not separately for the Glass app.

I'm sure they expect that the people making useful, quality Glass apps will often be making plenty of money from the services those apps interact with, not doing it out of either "sheer enjoyment" or "the goodness of their hearts."

>So we can expect a bunch of half-assed software with no support? Awesome.

Actually, I'd expect a lot of hobby projects. So far from half-assed (possibly very good), but yes, unsupported.

> "So we can expect a bunch of half-assed software with no support? Awesome."

I'd rather expect we'll see a bunch of data collection and notification apps for services (ad-supported or freemium) that are primarily consumed elsewhere [1]: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Breaking News, Dropbox, etc.

Nothing about 'free client'/'no ads' necessarily says 'not monetize-able'.

[1] Frankly, the Mirror API doesn't seem capable of much more than that anyway. All you can really do is push notifications and supply a prompt whereby users can send you pictures and video.

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