Project Glass Is The Future Of Google
Over the last few years one could easily say that Google had lost their way. They were no longer known for search. Somehow they'd turned into a company that acquired a series of nonsensical entities, launched half baked products that eventually hit …
Context & Ripple Effects
Project Glass has moved fast from rumor to product. In April, augmented-reality experts told Wired the headset faced serious technical and social hurdles; in May, Fast Company went inside Google X's secretive development process. At Google I/O this week, Sergey Brin demoed Glass on stage and the company opened a $1,500 Explorer Edition to US-based attendees, with units shipping early 2013.
The framing matters as much as the hardware: TechCrunch's argument is that Glass is Google's answer to a company that had drifted into acquisitions and half-baked launches. The same I/O stage carried the rest of the case — the $200 Nexus 7, Compute Engine opening Google's infrastructure to outside developers, Chrome arriving on iPhone and iPad, and Jelly Bean's earlier-OS program aimed at Android fragmentation.
First-order effects
- I/O developers who paid $1,500 become Glass's first ecosystem, carrying the Explorer Edition into public view months before any retail release.
- The skeptics' April critique — battery, display, and social acceptance — now gets tested against real hardware in real hands rather than prototype demos.
Second-order effects
- Rivals in mobile hardware and augmented reality face pressure to show wearable roadmaps of their own, since Google has claimed the category's mindshare before shipping a single retail unit.
- An early-adopter developer base at $1,500 a headset sets up a pricing and exclusivity dynamic: whoever builds the first must-have Glass apps shapes whether the platform feels essential or experimental.
Third-order effects
- If the Google X model holds — moonshot hardware as corporate identity rather than side project — expect large tech companies to institutionalize skunkworks labs as a hedge against their core businesses maturing.
- Wearables becoming the next computing surface would shift the battleground from screens and app stores to sensors, optics, and the social norms of always-on devices — a fight regulators and privacy advocates have barely entered.
The trend: Consumer computing is starting to migrate off the screen and onto the body, with Google staking its post-search identity on being first to define the category.