Google will stop selling Glass as it wants to reduce costs | CNN Business

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Google will no longer sell the latest business edition of Google Glass, the company announced this week, effectively killing off a line of innovative but failed wearable products from another era that many consumers might have assumed were gone.

First introduced in 2013, Google Glass was initially marketed to a general audience, with the promise of giving people access to a computer on their face instead of having to pull out a phone. But the smart glasses were discontinued in 2015 after beta versions failed to gain traction due to their high price, clunky design and privacy concerns.

Google then shifted its focus from consumers to businesses. The first Enterprise edition of Glass, announced in 2017, was pushed for use in industries such as manufacturing and logistics. Enterprise Edition 2, released in 2019, was Google’s last attempt to save the Glass product. But the $999 product didn’t make it.

“Thank you for more than a decade of innovation and partnership,” Google wrote on its FAQ page announcing the decision. The company will continue to support the Enterprise edition that is being phased out until September.

Google did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Google’s decision to discontinue the product comes amid cost-cutting across the company. Like many of its peers, Google has recently announced plans to lay off thousands of people in response to recession fears and shifting pandemic demand for digital products.

Still, the dream of Google Glass lives on. Snapchat’s parent company is selling Spectacles, another set of smart glasses that has struggled over the years to gain traction. Apple is working on augmented reality glasses. And even after the Glass pushback, Google said last year that it was continuing to test other AR glasses.

“Augmented reality (AR) is opening up new ways to interact with the world around us,” the company said in a blog post last summer. “It can help us quickly and easily access the information we need, such as understanding another language or knowing how best to get from point A to point B.”

A decade after Google launched Glass with an equally ambitious goal, the future is still coming into focus.