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Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

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161–170 of 259 posts

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#161
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…

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Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#162
I'd love to see a product that fills the "Google Glass: The Good Parts" niche. As much as I was on team "don't film me at the bar" when Google Glass was announced, there really IS the kernel of a neat idea there. Maybe it's just not possible to get the good parts without enabling the bad.

There was a Black Mirror episode about (iirc) contact lenses that offered always-on, high fidelity recording. They were used to turn people into self-survelliance machines with no privacy, whose every experience was subject to review. I suppose any time a thought along the lines of "I'd like that thing from Black Mirror, but..." occurs, it's worth stopping to wonder if you've missed the point. I digress.

I've had dozens of times in life where I wished I essentially had a dashcam for my face. It's such an appealing idea to be able to share "Let me show you just what I saw, as I saw it." Not all the time, but sometimes. And not with everybody, just with some people. The last time this desire occurred to me was during an early morning seven hour car + train + plane + bus + bike + (gratuitous) ferry + walk journey I was taking from North Georgia to Midtown Manhattan. Aside from the intentional bonanza of modes of transport, there are a ton of amazing vistas along the way; going from the woods in moonlight, rounding the curve to come into Atlanta lit up at night, seeing the sun come up over the clouds, the view of Manhattan on the final approach into LGA, etc. As it stands today, at points where I'm not biking or driving, I'll get out my phone to take a picture. "Look, here are three pictures I took" doesn't actually communicate what I want to communicate though. What I would really like is seven hours of footage, mostly played back at 50x speed, but slowing to closer to real time at the interesting parts. When those interesting parts are panoramas, those are the places I'd get out my phone for a picture today. There'd also be parts where nothing individually was particularly picture worthy (say, biking down Ditmars Blvd), but in toto it might be interesting to people.

What I wish I had was something natural-ish looking (i.e. I don't want to take a video of what I see on this trip, not of people staring at a camera rig I'm wearing while trying to take a video of what I see on this trip), in a form factor that I can safely wear and passively use while biking and driving. It would also need the ability to capture seven plus hours of good looking video. And also somehow privacy respecting and not dystopic.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, especially now, we can see lack of it drastically impacting new Google products like Stadia. No one can trust Google to maintain their products at all.

Stadia failed as a business, not as a product or technical solution. I work on Google Play, we've been going for a decade, no sign of stopping now. Much of what I and the many people around me do is maintenance – making things go faster, making things error less, etc. Some of that is done with new features, some is transparent to users (or app developers). I don't see this culture that HN seems so convinced about. I…

> I don't see this culture that HN seems so convinced about.

Isn't that perhaps because you're completely immersed in it to the point where it's invisible to you? To borrow David Foster Wallace's metaphor, fish don't see water either.

What outsiders (like us at HN) see is the external manifestation of culture. People naturally speculate about what they think is going on inside the chocolate factory, but the external part is very clear - a self-reinforcing vicious cycle where things get killed off leading to mistrust in the permanence of future things, leading to their failure, leading to them getting killed off.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#164

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…

Far from being different than startups, Google’s product development ecosystem actually mirrors the VC/startup ecosystem quite well.

The idea behind both is that you pursue a lot of varied opportunities simultaneously and then cull the ones that aren’t delivering dramatically outsized success.

A startups founding team, like a Google product team, may be committed to their product and want to pivot and keep taking fresh angles on adoption, but they can’t do that without money and the money works by different. Your favorite startups evaporate for the same reason.

That said, this approach seems to chip away at Google’s reputation and doesn’t seem to be yielding a lot of standout successes, so it might not be a great idea for them.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#165
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Netflix has a particular problem; maintaining series for more than a couple of seasons has always been hard in broadcasting. It's easier to spot now because people have complete visibility: instead of caring about a couple of series in key time slots, they can know care about all series, so it's more noticeable that most series die a sad death. Addressing off-ramps in a nicer way would be an innovation.…

The joke I've heard is "six seasons and a movie" that goes back to broadcast TV series. Something about contracts running six years, so costs balloon after that, and a one-time movie is much easier to schedule a group of actors for. I've long wondered why Netflix doesn't do it more often. I'm sore about the cancellation of "Santa Clarita Diet" and I think it could easily be wrapped up in a movie.

Costs (salaries) can balloon on successful series. It's also the case that, if a series is getting close to the number of episodes that can make for profitable syndication deals, it made sense (in the context of network TV) to stretch things to that point. It's also the case that, as long a series is still doing pretty well, odds are that putting something new in its slot will be a net negative.

Traditional broadcast also just had different incentives than streaming.

A successful sitcom captured a lot of eyeballs that could be translated into advertising dollars. It could also be a magnet for viewers to watch perhaps somewhat less captivating content in adjacent timeslots a la "must see TV Thursdays on NBC."

Netflix, on the other hand, mostly needs to fill its catalog and have enough really must see content so that subscribers keep renewing.

There's overlap between the two models. Both reward series that people really want to watch. But the specifics are subtly different.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#166
post #59

Google Glass, Google Car, Google Plus... Its always the same pattern. A lot of pre-release advertisment, followed by a release of a beta version and another press release declaring the end of the product. At this point, I wouldn't adopt any Google offering because I sort of expect by default it will go away in 6 months or 12.

Google Car as in Waymo? Isn't that still growing and getting expanded? Obviously self driving is harder than everyone thought, but its not abandoned by any means.

I still don't understand why everybody thought self-driving was so easy. It was clearly always going to be decades, not years for them to be ready for the mass market but so many people were acting like normal cars were already obsolete.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#167
post #45
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This isn't true...

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#168
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

google will never get a new service to a billion users right now They have the netflix problem (or does nexflix have the Google problem) they have killed off soo many projects that no one want to invest their time into new ones unless they reach the multi-year stage, and they can not reach the multi-year stage unless they get millions of users... It is a catch 22, and neither company seems to want to address or even…

I don't think Netflix has a particular problem; maintaining series for more than a couple of seasons has always been hard in broadcasting. It's easier to spot now because people have complete visibility: instead of caring about a couple of series in key time slots, they can know care about all series, so it's more noticeable that most series die a sad death. Addressing off-ramps in a nicer way would be an innovation.…

> You can basically freeze a product and keep it running forever for pennies

We’re moving to a security culture where a Cloud product not only has to be constantly rewritten to keep its features (not only upgrade libraries but also swap out the old Apache libs), but logs must be constantly inspected to address security risks, and GDPR issues have to be automatically lodged with CNIL. This “let’s keep this service only” has become as dangerous as leaving a Windows XP computer connected to the Internet.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out apprentice.io The founder initially fell in love with Google Glass and went on to build an AR/VR startup around it. They are life sciences focused, but I see no reason it couldn't fit your use case.

I just put in a request to talk to them. Got a call back from a sales rep. I explained the my application was remote support of engineers /customers working in on our hardware microscopes (similar to an electron microscope). The sales rep says they are only interested in selling life sciences /drug companies. So I would recommend against anyone contacting them who want to use this for general purpose AR.

Unfortunate! I think you can try their social channels (LinkedIn) and see if there's any interest higher up. Sales folks are probably too narrowly market focused.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#170

Now watch apple trigger red alerts in Google's and Samsung's HQ by releasing their AR glasses. As much as i hate Apple products, I can't deny that most of the time they are the leaders and the rest are just copies.

Leaders when they are releasing ar glasses well after other major players have? Microsoft will be on their third iteration by the time Apple releases theirs.
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