During a talk at Stanford for the engineering school’s centennial year, Google and Alphabet Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin recalled why Google Glass failed. He was joined onstage by Stanford president Jonathan Levin and Dean Jennifer Widom.
Google Glass, which launched in 2013, was a brand of smart glasses that enabled users to view and navigate through notifications and other smart phone functions projected in front of them. It was a breakthrough moment, but Google discontinued the product for the general consumer just a couple years later in 2015.
Brin referenced the Glass failure when a Stanford student asked him, “What mindset should aspiring entrepreneurs, like myself, adopt to avoid repeating earlier mistakes?”
“When you have your cool, new wearable device idea, really fully bake it before you have a cool stunt involving skydiving and airships,” Brin said. “That’s one tip I would give you.”
Levin laughed, but Brin’s advice was honest. Glass wasn’t developed enough before it hit the market, which led to a speedy decline.
The new, flashy product quickly lost appeal for its clunky design, expensive price tag, and concerns about privacy. People even nicknamed wearers “Glassholes.”
“I think I tried to commercialize it too quickly, before, you know, we could make it more, you know, as cost-effectively as we needed to and as polished as we needed to from a consumer standpoint and so forth,” Brin said. “I sort of, you know, jumped the gun and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m the next Steve Jobs, I can make this thing. Ta da.’”
Ava Levinson
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