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· Posted on
February 21, 2024

Google will stop selling its smart glasses because they were too dorky to succeed

Google will finally bid farewell to its wearable glasses.

What's the key learning?

  • Google's smart glasses were discontinued in 2015 because they were expensive, supposedly poorly designed and there were concerns about privacy.
  • Google pivoted to sell the glasses to big enterprises, but after failing, Google decided to stop selling them.
  • The people have spoken! It doesn’t matter how much size and scale a company has, if the market doesn’t want what you’re selling, you’ll eventually find out.

👉 Background: Back in 2013, Google unveiled its first version of Google Glass - the wearable device that gave people access to a computer on their face.

👉 What happened: The smart glasses were discontinued in 2015 because they were expensive, supposedly poorly designed and there were concerns about privacy. So Google pivoted to sell these babies to big enterprises.

👉 What else: But now, after its big push of Google Glass in big enterprises, Google will finally bid farewell to its creepy, wearable glasses. And they weren't the only ones to fail in this space.

What's the key learning?

💡 The people have spoken! It doesn’t matter how much size and scale a company has, if the market doesn’t want what you’re selling, you’ll eventually find out.

💡 Google isn't the only business to struggle with making smart glasses shine.

  • In 2016 Snap released $130 video-recording Spectacles, but made $40m losses because they expected a LOT more demand.
  • In 2021, Meta launched its $300 Ray-Ban Stories for video recording and sharing but failed to catch on.

💡 So while the concept sounds good in theory… a computer on your face vs a computer on your phone just isn’t stacking up right now.

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