Google today announced that they are discontinuing Google Glass, the somewhat controversial eyeglasses connected to your smartphone. The product may be dead, but the project is not officially abandoned. Google will continue to invest in their enterprise offering Glass at Work, and they say they plan to release a new model of the device “when it’s ready”.
This add Google Glass to a long line of other products and services Google have abandoned. Who does not remember Google Wave, an attempt to reinvent email? What about Google Answers? Google Video, an attempt to compete with Youtube, before they ended up buying that company instead? What about Dodgeball, the mobile social networking site purchased by Google whose founder left and went on to start FourSquare? There are many other products also shut down by Google, or companies bought up and later killed.
So with this kind of track record, I am not sure I would trust Google Apps with my enterprise data or business critical applications. Yes, Google Apps is not a free service for businesses like Gmail, but neither was Google Glass at a cost of $1,500 each. So being a paid product does not seem to stop Google from killing products.
Thanks for all your worthy efforts — I disagree though, with your ideas here…
Google has fully earned my rare trust, and warms my heart even — due to it’s highly-reliable and rare approach, for high-velocity pivotal blossoming of elegant technology, providing so many vital benefits, for so many people.
Why must Google — or any robust organization — handle all of its “minor learning efforts” (ie. Glass, Wave, etc) with the same level of commitment given to its “enterprise data or business critical” applications?
And, what kind of company would Google soon become, if it were to not allow itself an agile approach to push and prod various new technologies, through reasonable life-cycles, within unpredictable environments — but instead, to never ever terminate any ideas or efforts?
I say, “Go Google!” — full-speed ahead, to create rapidly and rely quickly on our real world, as an accurate compass for new ideas and efforts!
#Truth