Why Google Glass Will Fail | Hacker News Reader

Why Google Glass Will Fail

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11 pointsphilco33 comments

All of these arguments would also be valid for a post in the early 80's entitled "Why the Walkman Will Fail."

Hah, that's funny, but I disagree.

The walkman delivered value I couldn't get otherwise. I wanted to carry an extra device because I wanted music, and I couldn't play music otherwise. (Unless I carried a boombox on my shoulder, which some people did in awesome rap videos).

Google glass doesn't add tremendous value over what I can currently do with my phone. It takes pictures...faster...but I can already take pictures with my phone.

my phone also won't make me look like a dork. seriously, this is Google's number one hurdle to getting people to use this.

All bluetooth headsets make people look like dorks, but that hasn't stopped their proliferation.

FWIW, when I was an intern at Google, Sergey wore them 24/7. He looked a bit weird the first couple of times, but after that he just looks like Sergey. It's like people wearing glasses when they previously didn't. Weird for a bit, then perfectly normal afterwards.

headsets don't cover your face. big difference.

Not really. You know there was a time when people didn't wear glasses or sunglasses at all, then people started doing it, and now it's normal.

glasses = nerdy

sunglasses = cool

google glasses = dorky

99% of what Google glass can do I can do on my smartphone WITHOUT THE HASSLE and WITHOUT making me look like a dork.

Don't worry, in a decade or so, using a "smartphone" will make you look like a square.

Wearing a bluetooth headset is not required to use a cell phone though. It's optional. Also, how much have they really proliferated? I don't see them very often in my slice of suburbia.

"Google glass doesn't add tremendous value over what I can currently do with my phone."

Right now.

And yet, isn't one of your points that it's not a micro improvement? You're saying here it's a micro improvement on your phone... but that's a bad thing in your blog.

It's not hard to imagine Glass having a phone built in (in fact I'd welcome it, the apps I really need on my phone could easily be in Glass, and I could do without the distraction of the others), so I really am having trouble following your arguments based on a very very beta product that has plenty of years of runway to develop.

It's not a micro-improvement on my phone. It's an additional device.

The walkman delivered value I couldn't get otherwise

Transistor radio? Panasonic portable cassette[1]?

The Walkman had three things: size, stereo and marketing. Maybe you had a need for portable stereo playback in 1981, but for me and my friends it was the size and the marketing. Then again I never had a transistor radio, so I had no opportunity to be pre-jaded.

[1] http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_TjQbHKV2Vuc/S59ezmCHH7I/AAAAAAAAA3...

Bad analogy.

The Walkman, while creating detached non-social behavior, still only distracts the user, or a nearby busybody.

Glass turns you into that busybody, potentially prying into everyone else's business.

A potentially always-on camera recording into the cloud is unfriendly and unwelcome in a lot of ways.

Can someone post a mirror? I'm being prompted to sign in with Twitter to view the article, something which I have no intent of doing.

"Google Glass is a new gadget. Other popular devices reduced the number of gadgets I needed to carry and made life better, but Glass is an extra gadget plus it's stupid because it doesn't do anything and what it does do it does badly".

Yep. Solid TL;DR. Should've just blogged that instead.

That's really annoying. Sorry about that. Cross posted here: http://philco.squarespace.com/philcosblog/2013/6/25/why-goog...

Seriously... I guess I'm done clicking medium links from now on.

I think Glass will be awesome in certain areas, mostly related with work than pleasure. I am not an example that represents the whole, but my guess that the work field will be the Glass' nirvana and the rest will be covered by devices less obstructives with your look.

That's interesting. What are the work use cases you're seeing value in? (I haven't been in a formal office for so long, I may be missing the opportunity there entirely)

There are many uses for the profesional. Most of them related to imagery processing I guess, and reporting.

For example:

1. A police will start a suspect detention, then he starts recording the procedure as well his partner, so that video goes directly to the cloud and the police station officers can have for later reviews. This could be really nice for example it would provide many point of views of the action done and a police would not be charged for abuse of force if everything is recorded and, a citizen can be protected in case the officer abuses force.

2. inventorying. Scanning code bars, access items in a database, ask for availability, many things related to store management can be done by employees.

3. Medical: doctors can record procedures and save the images/videos to their systems, they can ask talk other doctors for opinions without even picking a phone. They can check a patient historial with better specifics. They can access facts inmmidiately, like "What's the level of O(2) blood has in case X, with person who drink remedy Y". Imagine the possibilities. Or access a vademecum, etc.

There are many uses. More than the ones I would use for fun i guess.

Love all those use cases. I wonder if their launch would have been more successful if they picked one of the above, gave it away for free to X doctors at St. Luke's in NYC with software adapted to their niche, and waited for word to spread about how useful they were for doctors and had metrics for the impact they had.

Your examples make me think of segways...great for cops apparently...but not so awesome for domestic use cases.

That was one of the perfect examples of totally high-tech stuff but really rarely seen on private use. I only meet 3 segways owners but know dozen of companies that use the thing for workers.

Conspiracy theory time.

What if employers start making employees wear them and have the video retained indefinitely? So that everything you saw, said and did was recorded for your employer to watch.

If this video streams to any online account, what’s to stop an outside agency from getting their hands on it.

Personally, I think it's rather upsetting that the feature people always rave about the most is the one that quickest turns us into an even more voluntary surveillance state.

TLDR: we don't need damn cameras on our damn faces. I promise your life can be fulfilling with out them.

I don't think it'll fail. I think it's going to be a massive success for people already addicted to things like facebook, instagram and reddit. The thought of never having to miss some tiny thing to share online so you can amass a tiny bit more internet karma is too alluring to go un-utilized. The amount of 'check out what this person said at burger king' and 'look at this person dancing on the subway' videos is going to skyrocket.

> Problem is…people who wear glasses can’t wear Google Glass.

Uhh, what? I was under the assumption, at least from all their marketing material and everything that I've heard about Glass from other people on the internet, that there are models that fit over your existing prescription glasses. No?

I may be wrong! Thanks for correcting me. That having been said, it should REPLACE glasses, not be in addition to. Still doesn't solve a problem for their prime target demo.

What's the difference between them offering snap-on Glass over existing prescription glasses, and offering an existing Glass model with snap-in prescription lenses? You need to have one or the other, and in both cases it's an addition to normal glasses, not a replacement. Your requirement can never be satisfied for those with sub-par vision.

As for your main point: for this initial model, the main benefit it offers, that I hear from users time and time again, is the instant photo/video capability. Not having to dig your phone or camera out of your pocket / handbag is a huge win for a lot of people in the initial explorer program.

But that's not why I think the product will succeed. I can see the future potential of an always-on heads-up display, and that's just too useful to pass up. Will it ever get there? Maybe not, but I think it has a greater chance of that than failure.

Yeah. Google is working on this right now. The problem point from what I understand is making the frames compatible with the IR sensor that does wink detection.

We whipped up a quick adapter in a few minutes using OpenSCAD and found that the IR sensor was the pain point. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:88426

as is, they can rest on top of your glasses, but it looks weird. Companies are looking into making prescription lenses to fit on to the frame. There will likely be options when/if it becomes a consumer product

A glasses don't replace something I already wear post from a guy who still uses a watch.

"IT’s hard to explain, but I feel like there’s a barrier between us - I wonder if they’re going to interact with Glass at some point and do something in the middle of our conversation."

Funny, I feel the same way about cell phones.

[Reads title] "Medium? Pandodaily? Techcrunch? Check."

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