After announcing the end of the Google Glass Explorer program mid-January, a new report from the New York Times has quoted several sources who have said that new models of Glass will be re-designed from the ground up.
Last month, Google announced that the Glass Explorer program was ending, with sales of the headset through Google Play halting on the 19th of January. As par to fthe move, the Glass team would graduate from the Google X Labs where the project began, to a fully fledged team at Google. The project is still headed up by ex-GAP Inc VP of product design and jewellery designer Ivy Ross, but she will now report to Nest CEO Tony Fadell, who according to sources is apparently interested in taking a role in the design.
According to ‘several people with knowledge’ about the project, Mr Fadell, who is considered ‘one of the fathers of the iPod’ and a great designer all round, will be hard at work on new versions of Glass. Apparently the new version of Glass will be re-designed from scratch, but will incorporate lessons learned from the Glass Explorer program. According to the sources, Mr Fadell won’t be releasing any further ‘Glass Explorer’ like trials, instead the next version will be released only when it’s perfect.
With no more Glass Explorer trials running, we hopefully will see what’s happening with Glass V2 soon – and we hope to see it on-sale in Australia when it does finally launch.
I don’t know why the media all picked up the headline about glass being dead. The press release said they are moving to become a fully fledged Google team. Why do that with a dead product. Did people stop reading after it said they were ending the beta program?