Google Glass App Store Coming In 2014
Google Glass users and developers will have to wait until next year for Google to launch a dedicated app store for the device. — A Google spokesperson confirmed that plan for us today, after it was reported over the weekend in a lengthy first-person Glass user essay in the New York Times.
Context & Ripple Effects
The confirmation came via a Google spokesperson after a first-person Glass user essay in the New York Times reported the timeline over the weekend, and the story traveled widely the same day — pickups at CNET, ZDNet, The Verge, SlashGear and others — signaling how much attention the Explorer-era device commands despite its small user base.
The 2014 window extends an existing pattern of Google holding tight control over what runs on Glass: back in May 2013 it said it would not approve any Glass apps with facial recognition until privacy protections were in place, so an official store was always going to double as an approval gate, not just a storefront.
First-order effects
- Glass developers stay without an official distribution or monetization channel through 2013, keeping early apps dependent on Google's own curation rather than an open market.
- Google retains unilateral gatekeeper power over the Glass catalog during the device's most formative period, with its facial-recognition freeze showing approval policy will be set case by case.
Second-order effects
- Rival wearable makers — including Samsung, against whom Google is confirmed to be developing its own smartwatch after last year's WIMM Labs acquisition — face a Google that is sequencing hardware, software, and now storefront economics across wearables.
- Developers weighing where to invest scarce early-wearables effort must choose between waiting on Glass's 2014 store or building for competing platforms that may open distribution sooner.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, wearable computing inherits the mobile playbook wholesale: platform owners control app approval and revenue, making sensor-sensitive categories like face recognition a governance battleground decided by the gatekeeper rather than the market.
The trend: Wearable computing is being organized around mobile-style app-store gatekeeping, with Google setting both the launch cadence and the approval rules for what Glass can do.