We’d barely put down our Champagne glasses and CES party hats away when the tech field’s New Year’s buzz was killed with the news that Google was taking Glass off the market.
It was probably the right thing to do, a real grownup decision for Google – a company that famously encourages employee innovation. And, sure, maybe Google Glass did seem like the sad punchline to a cruel geek joke (see the clip above, in which the Daily Show skewers “eye douches” wearing “$1,500 face computers.”).
But if you are in tech and love tech, it kind of hurts.
The fact that Google is taking its ball and going home may cause some to scale back all the hype and enthusiasm about wearable tech (a cornerstone of the vaunted Internet of Things, or IoT) as the Glasses were its poster child. And IoT is one of the great hopes of tech.
While you won’t catch me admitting to liking hype (or creating it) a certain amount of bullishness is good for business. It sells media and gear, a boon to those who market tech (and their PR agencies, let’s face it).
The retraction is also a little depressing because it calls in to question all the feel good, liberating talk of failing fast – just get product out there, the tech wonks tell the starry-eyed entrepreneurs. You will figure it out, with feedback and guidance from the market.
Innovate. Launch. Iterate. And quickly, for Chrissakes don’t make a career out of it.
Well, you can’t fail fast without a little failure, some might retort.
Perhaps – but maybe, just maybe, there’s some good advice about market research and planning in all those dry MBA textbooks.
Doing some of those basics might have helped Google avoid another cliché – offering a technology in search of a problem to solve.
