During a talk at Stanford for the engineering school’s centennial year, Google and Alphabet Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin recalled why Google Glass failed. He was joined onstage by Stanford president Jonathan Levin and Dean Jennifer Widom.
Google Glass, which launched in 2013, was a brand of smart glasses that enabled utilizers to view and navigate through notifications and other smart phone functions projected in front of them. It was a breakthrough moment, but Google discontinued the product for the general consumer just a couple years later in 2015.
Brin referenced the Glass failure when a Stanford student inquireed him, “What mindset should aspiring entrepreneurs, like myself, adopt to avoid repeating earlier mistakes?”
“When you have your cool, new wearable device idea, really fully bake it before you have a cool stunt involving skydiving and airships,” Brin declared. “That’s one tip I would give you.”
Levin laughed, but Brin’s advice was honest. Glass wasn’t developed enough before it hit the market, which led to a speedy decline.
The new, flashy product quickly lost appeal for its clunky design, expensive price tag, and concerns about privacy. People even nicknamed wearers “Glassholes.”
“I consider I tested to commercialize it too quickly, before, you know, we could create it more, you know, as cost-effectively as we requireded to and as polished as we requireded to from a consumer standpoint and so forth,” Brin declared. “I sort of, you know, jumped the gun and I considered, ‘Oh, I’m the next Steve Jobs, I can create this thing. Ta da.’”
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