How Google Fumbled Glass — and How to Save It

What's This?

Image: Mashable composite. iStockphoto , prill, John Minchillo/Associated Press

By Pete Pachal2014-04-01 20:27:05 UTC

"Hey, is that Google Glass?"

The question came from a man on New York City's Fifth Avenue as I rushed to a meeting. He was correct. The blue apparatus on my face was indeed Google Glass, which I hadn't worn in public for a while. When I wore it for several periods during 2013, passers-by would typically wait a little longer before asking about it. They were usually excited.

See also: This Is Why Google Glass Is the Future

This was different. The man's tone was urgent, almost accusatory.

"Yes," I answered, not stopping — mainly because I was late for my meeting, but also because something felt off about the exchange.

"Man, that's scary."

Unsure of how to respond, I muttered a semi-sarcastic, "Thanks."

"It's not a compliment!" he barked before turning and walking off the other way.

That was new. I'd been shot the occasional suspicious look while wearing Google Glass; never out-and-out hostility. As the drive-by heckling reverberated in my head, I couldn't help but think about the now-infamous Google Glass incident that had happened recently at a bar in San Francisco, where patrons, apparently irate at being potentially recorded (and then actually recorded), appear to have harassed and robbed a woman wearing Glass, with one of them snatching the device right off her face.

While the full picture of what happened during that particular episode remains in dispute (and the woman, Sarah Slocum, has hardly helped her case by trying to parlay her 15 minutes of fame into free trips from Google), the incident became a watershed moment in the life of Google Glass. It was an indicator that public sentiment toward the device has taken a turn for the worse, perhaps irrevocably.

It didn't have to be this way. Sure, any connected device that puts a camera on a person's body automatically invites some kind of backlash. But Google, despite its good intentions, released Glass in a very unusual manner, and has stumbled along the way. You can trace back many of the image problems Glass is experiencing now to key decisions made earlier in the rollout.

So where did it all go wrong?

Cracked Glass

For evidence of the problem, you don't have to look farther than Google itself. Type the term "Google Glass is" in Google autocomplete to see what most people are searching for on the topic; it's not a pretty picture.

Image: Google

If you peruse the comment threads on anything written about the Slocum encounter, you'd think Glass was not just to blame for provoking the barfight, but also for San Francisco's gentrification issues, the eroding of privacy in general and, possibly, the coming war with the machines. At least one restaurant has banned Glass because of the incident, and others were doing it already.

Slocum isn't even officially a Glass Explorer (the device was a gift), but the damage done is indisputable.

Even some of Glass's strongest advocates are souring on it. Robert Scoble, probably the earliest and most enthusiastic Glass Explorer, has been trashing the connected headset lately, first ripping apart the device itself and later Google's entire strategy around it.

"All sorts of things are broken, like you can only put 10 contacts into [Glass] so using it as a phone accessory sucks," Scoble told Mashable, adding that Google's biggest mistake surrounding Glass has been in communication. "[Privacy] has certainly hurt it in the press. I just don't have that many bad reactions in public. What is really wrong is it is so broken that it is hard to be positive about it with others."

As an Explorer myself, I feel Scoble's pain even if I don't agree with all his criticisms (I like that Glass is designed explicitly to not keep you as connected as a smartphone). I also share Scoble's enthusiasm — after using Glass for a while, I've seen the amazing potential of the technology. But watching incidents like Slocum's barfight take hold of the narrative has been a painful experience. With each complaint, it becomes harder not to admit there's something to what opponents are saying.

Google hasn't been sitting on its hands. The company published a pretty good guide to wearing Glass without being called a "Glasshole," It continues the attempt to manage expectations, most recently by dispelling myths about Glass — mainly the ones that creep people out, like exactly what that camera's doing — and pointing out that Glass is currently a prototype, not a finished product.

Fair enough, but the mere fact that Google needs to play damage control confirms that the tenor of the discussion around Google Glass has changed, and not for the better. The excitement surrounding Sergey Brin's daring Glass-inspired skydiving stunt at Google I/O 2012 is a distant memory. Glass in 2014 has become an emblem for technology's worst stereotypes: ultra-geeky, expensive and — worst of all — privacy-destroying.

The Fashion Factor

The first mistake Google made with Glass came before anyone even knew about it. A key decision was made in the production of Glass — that it should stand out, not blend in. Sure, a connected headset requires something a little bulkier than your typical Warby Parker frames, but Google decided to: a) use an odd asymmetrical design, and b) offer it in five colors.

If an Explorer selects either "sky" or "tangerine," Glass doesn't just stand out. It screams.

Glass earned unfavorable comparisons to other weird-looking tech. Well-known industrial designer Marc Newson recently said he wouldn't be caught dead wearing it, complaining Glass makes the user look like a "complete dick" in the same way the Segway did. "That's precisely the moment when I think the fashion world laughs at the world of industrial design, justifiably," he told Dezeen .

Giving Glass a touch of flamboyance was understandable; every manufacturer wants its signature products to get noticed. The design guaranteed Glass would turn heads — but it also ensured no one could be neutral about it. The future was here, sitting on someone's face, and it was instantly on trial: You either were intrigued and enthralled by the potential of an always-connected headset, or — like Neil Gaiman — you just thought it looked very, very silly.

"The design itself isn't bad," Evan Ryan, an industrial designer with Ecco, told Mashable, "but it doesn't look right as a thing you wear every day. It doesn't even look within the realm of some of the outlandish fashion styles you might see in New York City."

The ostentatious design had a secondary effect: It ensured Glass's earliest ambassadors would be people who wanted to be noticed. These aren't the soccer moms and guitarists we saw in the earliest promo videos for Glass, sharing clips and getting directions to the nearest cool food truck. No, the people introducing Glass to the world are digital marketers, consultants and bloggers — people more likely to use Glass for a reality show or advertising campaign than logging their everyday moments.

This was confirmed to me when I attended a Google Glass Explorer meetup in New York City last fall. Looking to get developers' impressions of Glass, I instead got a cavalcade of self-promotional characters, each weirder than the last. When an ambitious teenager with excruciatingly bad breath tried to tell me he wanted to become the first person to win political office with a Glass-powered campaign, I didn't know whether to laugh, or laugh really loudly.

"Any obsession can be blinding, and with technology the idea of becoming superhuman can be very intoxicating," says Jonas Damon, a designer with frog design. "Being under the spell of this promise, we forget how obtrusive a chunky piece of hardware on our heads can be. That person sees non-stop access to data. That is the person who wears Google Glass."

Recruiting some epically bad ambassadors for Glass was Google's next mistake. The company did it via the #IfIHadGlass campaign. This seemed like a genius move at the time: get people to tell you how they'd use Glass, then send headsets to the ones who make the most promising and creative suggestions.

"The goal of #IfIHadGlass was to get Glass into the hands of people from all walks of life," Ed Sanders, Google's director of marketing for Google Glass, told Mashable. "Sure, there have been some controversial moments, and you can choose to focus on those few, but there are thousands of Explorers out there and, broadly speaking, we've been amazed and inspired by them. This is exactly what we were after when we started the Explorer program and we haven't been disappointed."

From the looks of things at that meetup, however, Google may as well have used the hashtag #WeirdosUnite. Having a creative idea about Google Glass isn't the same as executing it, and it certainly doesn't guarantee an appropriate ambassadorial personality. Google correctly points out that not everyone is doing a Google Glass reality show, and that many developers are doing worthwhile and technically impressive things with the device.

But standing out from the crowd is part of the deal, and a large number of Glass Explorers clearly see the device as a $1,500 ticket to notoriety.

Developing long

Google has certainly given Glass users enough time to get noticed. The device itself was unveiled in spring 2012. The company sent out its first units in April 2013. A year later, the commercial release of Google Glass is still nowhere on the horizon (officially there's no release date, although Brin has said in interviews that 2014 is the target).

According to Google, this was the plan all along. "We had two choices: design Glass in a secret conference room somewhere with zero input from the outside world, or design it in the open with the help from our Explorers and the wider public," Sanders said. "We believe the latter is the right approach because it gives us the opportunity to build a device that reflects how people use it in the real world.

"Gmail was in beta for years as engineers worked to make it a fantastic email platform. This phase of Glass can be messy and imperfect, but the final result in the long term is worth it."

The Gmail comparison works up to a point. Unlike Gmail, Glass is also a new category — one that forces questions about social acceptance and privacy. It's also in limited supply, and you have to pay $1,500 for the privilege even if you score an invite. Gmail's beta was free, and invites were much easier to come by — every Gmail user started with 99 of them. It also wasn't something you could wear on a date.

The privacy concerns around Glass aren't baseless. Although the camera technology of Glass is no different from a smartphone's, the fact that the camera rests on your face changes everything. The first question most people ask when they approach me about Glass is: "are you recording me?"

The Toluna Group, a market research firm, recently surveyed consumer reactions to Glass in multiple countries. The survey of 3,000 people (some results below) found that fears about private actions becoming public in the presence of Google Glass was a common theme, and that many people — 69% of respondents in the U.K. — were concerned about what Glass meant for privacy.

Image: Toluna

"There are a lot of cameras out there," says Bob Gellman, a Washington, D.C.-based privacy consultant. "But being photographed by individuals is kind of a different thing ... it's not some screaming violation of everything, but it's the difference between talking to a reporter on the record or off the record. When the camera's on, you're on the record all the time, whether you know it or not."

Putting the camera in full view on a garish gadget was supposed to quell any fears about Glass as a privacy-violating device. It has actually had the opposite effect. Google made Glass the only digital camera left that doesn't use actually use facial-recognition technology, but even that hasn't silenced the critical voices of privacy advocates.

"A lot of people don’t recognize Google Glass and don’t necessarily know what its capabilities are," says Gellman. "Whatever they are, they could easily become less transparent as the technology gets better and smaller. I think the word that applies here is 'creepy.'"

Those concerns have been exacerbated by the fact that Glass is still only in the hands of around 10,000 people. Even now, a year after the launch and two years after it was first unveiled, many people still regard Glass as spyware, and at least one developer has obliged them by creating an app that offers no indication when Glass is taking photos. Australia is even thinking of overhauling its privacy laws in the wake of Glass.

This is a perfect illustration of the bind Google finds itself in. Misinformation and exaggerated reports would be easier to shoot down if Glass were a real product, with millions of units in circulation. But Google is clearly tiptoeing here, not so much testing whether Glass is ready for customers but whether society is ready for Glass.

Google has already been dinged over privacy (and now has the FTC looking over its shoulder for the next two decades). It has inadvertently annoyed various industries for making wrongheaded assumptions about major products (such as Google TV, which irritated content providers). Having learned its lessons, Google is being particularly careful with the Glass rollout.

Perhaps too careful. The excruciatingly long timeframe is allowing critics, and incidents like the bar assault, to take hold of the product's narrative. For every firefighter or doctor who does something innovative with Glass, someone is pulled over while driving with the device, or gets thrown out of a movie theater and interrogated by the FBI for wearing it.

Google may have made the right decision in developing Glass in public, but the conspicuous design, the #IfIHadGlass campaign and the excruciatingly long road to a consumer launch were all self-inflicted wounds.

A new pane dawns

There's still time to make this right. Google's deal with Luxottica — tying the device to a well-known consumer eyewear brand — is a step in the right direction. Getting Ray-Ban to make frames for Google Glass doesn't nullify privacy issues, but it does increase the desirability factor.

Another good step would be to better control who's actually getting Glass pre-launch. Google needs to give out memberships to the Glass club in a manner more like El Al Airlines, and less like Oprah ("And you get a Glass! And you get a Glass!"). Let's have no more consultants, reality show creators or wannabe politicians; not until everyone can buy it.

Image: Mashable

Even better, more Google personnel should be advocates for Glass. Robert Scoble criticized Larry Page when he appeared recently at TED for not wearing Glass, and it's hard not to see his point. If Glass really does improve someone's digital life and look stylish, why isn't Google's own CEO wearing it?

Defenders might say the device isn't appropriate all the time, but at some point this lack of visibility on Google's most visible faces starts to come across as a lack of confidence.

Finally, Google should rethink the design — particularly its initial decision to make Glass conspicuous. That made the device a lightning rod for privacy fears, and ensured only a self-selecting few would take part in Google's head-mounted wearable adventure.

True, Glass that looks more like a regular pair of glasses may garner more criticism from privacy advocates. But anyone actually interested in the benefits of the technology would breathe a sigh of relief, knowing they wouldn't necessarily have to act as an ambassador every time they put them on in public. Maybe even Neil Gaiman would try them.

"The design of Glass has changed many times in the last two years and it will continue to change," Sanders said. "Two years ago it was a couple of cell phone boards hot-glue-gunned to wireframe glasses. Today, it weighs about as much as a pair of sunglasses. And with Luxottica onboard, Explorers can expect even more design choices in the months ahead."

To be completely clear, I really like Google Glass. I usually wear it when I play with my kids to ensure I capture wonderful, fleeting moments without needing to aim or focus anything with my hands. I wear it in public often. I like talking to people about it and, if there's time, showing them the benefits of a connected headset.

And the benefits are many. Seeing messages — but only essential ones — the instant they come in keeps me in the loop with people I care about. Having voice-activated access to Google anytime, anywhere has let me get answers to quick questions, the kind I'd never have bothered to pull out my smartphone to ask. The way it does turn-by-turn directions is a dream, especially in the car.

However, as much as I'd like to dismiss the bars that have banned Glass, the FBI agents who detained the man who wore Glass to a movie theater, and the gentleman who yelled at me on the street as paranoid cranks, I have to admit their concerns have some merit. Google Glass looks weird, a lot of weirdos are wearing it, and there's that camera.

Google has to change the conversation, and fast. If it doesn't, the promise of Google Glass — and other smart glasses like it — will probably be eclipsed by smartwatches, which are experiencing a surge in interest. If Apple's rumored iWatch is available to consumers before Glass, Google is going to have a much harder time convincing people that they should experience on their faces the same sort of thing that looks more stylish on their wrists.

Smart glasses still have a shot at becoming mainstream wearable technology. If Google really wants Glass to be part of our future, it needs to put on its connected headset and lead. We can see the vision. Now's not the time to blink.

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Topics: Gadgets, Google Glass, Google Glass, head-mounted displays, Mobile, smart glasses, Tech, wearables