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Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

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Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#41

Post by lozenge »

sokoloff wrote: post #29
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #15

Somewhat related, a question for HN people: Is there a product — perhaps some kind of goggles — that I can wear on my face which will simulate the experience of watching a big television? I don't want virtual reality or augmented reality or anything like that. I just want to be able to sit on a long-haul flight and isolate my eyes and ears in such a way that it feels like I'm sitting alone in a dark room watching a m…

How would having the feeling of watching a movie alone in a dark room while actually sitting on an airplane not be a form of virtual reality?

VR headsets have a scene and use head tracking to make the scene appear stationary.

I guess they want to feel like a TV is strapped to their head instead.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#42

Post by Reason077 »

asim wrote: post #30

Innovators dilemma. You were early to market, you did all the work, and no one wanted the product. What do you do? Keep going? Or give up from exhaustion? This is the unfortunate situation with many who tackle new spaces like Mobile, VR and AR. Google will no doubt re-enter the space, but only after it's been validated. And that's totally fine. Expect Google to produce quality hardware and software at a time when the…

Starline, really? While this sounds like neat technology, I'm not sure if it has mass-market potential in the same way that VR/AR does. Is every company going to be clamouring to outfit their meeting rooms with Starline units? Is every kid going to want a bulky Starline set in their home/bedroom? How much is it going to cost relative to the sort of cheap mass-market headsets that are likely to be available in 5 years time?

Remember, Google is a company that shuts down even some of its relatively successful products, so it's hard to imagine Starline ever succeeding as an actual Google hardware product.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#43

Post by xorcist »

throwaw12 wrote: post #25

At this point, I think issue is not about products Google build, it is about how Google put their incentives in place. - Build new shiny thing -> promoted - Support shiny thing -> it's not difficult, everyone can do it This type of culture is influencing future direction of Google products, they put together awesome team, solve problem and get from 0 to 1, then team moves on, others don't have incentive to make 1 to…

> Support shiny thing -> it's not difficult, everyone can do it

Sometimes people say those things, but I can't understand for whom it rings true.

What's especially hard about new things? Maintenance on the other hand, can be much more tricky. Especially when taking backwards compatibility in mind you really have to think about every step going forward.

It's much easier to build a brand new highway than repairing an existing one which is in use without disturbing traffic, if the car analogy can be forgiven.

I think the situation here has more to do with Google culture where the are too scared to stop throwing stuff at the wall and see what sticks.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#44

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

sintezcs wrote: post #28
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #15

Somewhat related, a question for HN people: Is there a product — perhaps some kind of goggles — that I can wear on my face which will simulate the experience of watching a big television? I don't want virtual reality or augmented reality or anything like that. I just want to be able to sit on a long-haul flight and isolate my eyes and ears in such a way that it feels like I'm sitting alone in a dark room watching a m…

Take a look at this: https://vimeo.com/798231818/660e3a441c?embedded=true&source=...

It was quite hard for me to follow what this product is or what it is for. It felt more like watching the opening credits of a James Bond movie than a video showing me what product I should buy and why.

It also says it isn't actually available for purchase yet.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#45

Post by hbossy »

jeroenhd wrote: post #5
senttoschool wrote: post #3

More than 10 years later, it's still not good enough for business adoption? Wow. When it was first released, it was really neat. I'd imagine that we'd all be wearing AR glasses by now.

Google Glass wasn't really AR, more like a smart watch taped to your face, so I can imagine there being little business adoption. HoloLens seems much more promising, but development still seems to be slow. I'd love to see AR succeed but with the current price I doubt it'll gain popularity in the near future.

Microsoft has laid off entire HoloLens team. It's dead.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#46

Post by bborud »

I wish they had spun it off so it wouldn't just have died within Google. It seems that any project that isn't wildly popular is just starved of talent inside Google. Outside Google with a little bit of money and a dedicated team, I don't see why this couldn't have been a success.

What I would really like was a product that was developed to be affordable, fairly open so you can easily integrate it into your own system, write applications that can run on the device without need to call home to the mothership etc.

There are lots of situations where it would have been very convenient to have access to an affordable, ruggedized, light-weight product that provides both a head mounted display, a decent quality camera and a user interface that can be operated while wearing gloves.

For instance, right now I'm involved in a project where we help build a huge piece of machinery (the size of several intercity trains in terms of size and mass). The team is spread all over the world while the building of the actual machine takes place in a backwater that takes about a 24 hours to travel to. It would be really useful if the onsite engineers could stream video of what they see while working on the machine rather than having to use handheld mobile phones. It would also be useful if they could see telemetry and parameters in the display as they work on the machine without having to move to look at the various displays. Perhaps also see the video stream of other engineers working at the same site.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#47

Post by moomin »

throwaw12 wrote: post #25

At this point, I think issue is not about products Google build, it is about how Google put their incentives in place. - Build new shiny thing -> promoted - Support shiny thing -> it's not difficult, everyone can do it This type of culture is influencing future direction of Google products, they put together awesome team, solve problem and get from 0 to 1, then team moves on, others don't have incentive to make 1 to…

Indeed, and calling it “moving the needle” doesn’t make a difference. You can see these perverse incentives in the sheer number of times Google has launched a different version of the same product.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#48

Post by Sol- »

Figured that they'd hop on the techno-utopian bandwagon that's currently being pushed and double down on bringing the glassholes back instead. People are also seem more desensitized to privacy concerns nowadays, so they might have a chance of bringing the ubiquitous AI-enabled surveillance to the masses.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#49

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #22
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #15

Somewhat related, a question for HN people: Is there a product — perhaps some kind of goggles — that I can wear on my face which will simulate the experience of watching a big television? I don't want virtual reality or augmented reality or anything like that. I just want to be able to sit on a long-haul flight and isolate my eyes and ears in such a way that it feels like I'm sitting alone in a dark room watching a m…

You can get "headsets" that your phone slots into for less than $50. Pair it with some decent headphones.

This is essentially what I'm looking for, but I'm struggling to find a specific product to buy. It seems all of my searches turn up results where I need some dorky hand-held controllers, or I need to be connected to a big gaming PC, or that it's a simple headset but the iPhone doesn't actually fit in it.

Do you know any that will fit an iPhone 13? I have some decent noise-cancelling headphones already.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#50

Post by rightbyte »

throwaw12 wrote: post #25

At this point, I think issue is not about products Google build, it is about how Google put their incentives in place. - Build new shiny thing -> promoted - Support shiny thing -> it's not difficult, everyone can do it This type of culture is influencing future direction of Google products, they put together awesome team, solve problem and get from 0 to 1, then team moves on, others don't have incentive to make 1 to…

> - Support shiny thing -> it's not difficult, everyone can do it

This is not a truism, even though many managers see it like that. Dealing with someone else's mess is way harder than to deal with your own.

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