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Sergey Brin, the CEO and co-founder of Google,
wears a Google Glass during a product demonstration Wednesday during
Google I/O 2012 at Moscone Center in San Francisco. The breakthrough is a wearable computer — a pair of internet-connected glasses that Google Inc. began secretly building more than two years ago. The technology progressed far enough for Google to announce "Project Glass" in April. Now the futuristic experiment is moving closer to becoming a mass-market product.
Google announced Wednesday that it's selling a prototype of the glasses to U.S. computer programmers attending a three-day conference that ends Friday. Developers willing to pay $1,500 US for a pair of the glasses will receive them early next year.
The company is counting on the programmers to suggest improvements and build applications that will make the glasses even more useful.
"This is new technology and we really want you to shape it," Google co-founder Sergey Brin told about 6,000 attendees. "We want to get it out into the hands of passionate people as soon as possible."
Could hit market in early 2014
If all goes well, a less expensive version of the glasses is expected to go on sale for consumers in early 2014. Without estimating a price for the consumer version, Brin made it clear the glasses will cost more than smartphones."We do view this is as a premium sort of thing," Brin said during a question-and-answer session with reporters.
Brin acknowledged Google still needs to fix a variety of bugs in the glasses and figure out how to make the battery last longer so people can wear them all day.
Those challenges didn't deter Brin from providing conference attendees Wednesday with a tantalizing peek at how the glasses might change the way people interact with technology.
Google hired skydivers to jump out of a blimp hovering 7,000 feet above downtown San Francisco. They wore the Internet-connected glasses, which are equipped with a camera, to show how the product could unleash entirely new ways for people to share their most thrilling — or boring — moments. As the skydivers parachuted onto the roof of the building where the conference was held, the crowd inside was able to watch the descent through the skydivers' eyes as it happened.
"I think we are definitely pushing the limits," Brin told reporters after the demonstration. "That is our job: to push the edges of technology into the future."
Brin's focus
The glasses have become the focal point of Brin's work since he stepped away from Google's day-to-day operations early last year to join the engineers working on ambitious projects that might once have seemed like the stuff of science fiction. Besides the Internet-connected glass, the so-called Google X lab has also developed a fleet of driverless cars that cruise roads. The engineers there also dream of building elevators that could transport people into space.While wearing Google's glasses, directions to a destination or a text message from a friend can appear literally before your eyes. You can converse with friends in a video chat, take a photo without taking out a camera or phone or even buy a few things online as you walk around.
The glasses will likely be seen by many critics as the latest innovation that shortens attention spans and makes it more difficult for people to fully appreciate what's happening around them.
But Brin and the other engineers are hoping the glasses will make it easier for people to strike the proper balance between the virtual and physical worlds. If they realize their goal, it will seem odd in three or four years for people to be looking up and down on their phones when they could have all the digital tools they need in a pair of glasses
Isabelle Olsson, one of the engineers working on the project, said the glasses are meant to interact with people's senses, without blocking them. The display on the glasses' computer appears as a small rectangular on a rim above the right eye. During short test of the prototype glasses, a reporter for The Associated Press was able to watch a video of exploding fireworks on the tiny display screen while remaining engaged with the people around him.
Glasses are programmable
The glasses seem likely to appeal to runners, bicyclists and other athletes who want to take pictures of their activities as they happen. Photos and video can be programmed to be taken at automatic intervals during any activity.Brin said he became excited about the project when he tossed his son in the air and a picture taken by the glasses captured the joyful moment, just the way he saw it.
"That was amazing," Brin said. "There was no way I could have that memory without this device."
Google is now accepting pre-orders for an Explorer Edition of Google Glass, its lightweight eyeglass-meets-smartphone invention. For U.S.-based attendees of its I/O developer conference willing to pay $1,500, it will ship in early 2013.
Calling it a Glass Explorer Edition, Brin said they’re now available for preorder, and Google will begin shipping the units early next year to U.S.-based attendees for $1,500.
“This is a really new technology, and we want to get you to help shape it,” he told the crowd.
The Glass is essentially a pair of very lightweight eyeglasses with a tiny display-like component just above the user’s right eye—carefully positioned to not block the wearer’s direct vision—that enables the capture and sharing of photos and video in real time, such as in a Google Hangout (thus the sky diving escapade) as well as basically all the things we use our smartphones for. Google says it’s working on a version that could be compatible with prescription glasses.
Can’t picture it? Google posted a helpful video on YouTube.
The Glass could be worn by a surgeon, showing a difficult procedure from his or her perspective, or by a professional athlete—what does it look like to have a Rafael Nadal serve aimed at you?—or by a chef showing off a recipe or technique. Google expects a lot of parents will want to wear it to catch footage of their kids doing amazingly cute things. Surely, someday, we won’t be spared a reality show from the perspective of a Glass.
But there’s much more the Glass is capable of, and Googlers don’t want to be the only one doing the thinking.
“We could just keep developing this in our own little corner of the universe—many companies would just secretly develop it and say, ‘Ta-da! Here it is, world!’ But since we showed it to the public in April we’ve gotten so many great ideas and so much feedback, and we found that so valuable,” Brin said later, during a video interview on Bloomberg. “We want to take it to the next level by letting other people—who are dedicated and serious and willing to be on the cutting edge—letting them do their own experimentation learnings that can feedback to us and affect our future designs and software.”
The Glass, while figuratively and literally a show stopper—Brin had to hop onstage and interrupt a demonstration, to properly time things with the skydivers—wasn’t the biggest announcement of the day. Google introduced Android version 4.1, nicknamed “Jelly Bean”; as rumored, a tablet of its very own, the (Asus made) Nexus 7; and, greater surprise, the Google Q, a bowling ball-shaped home media hub that can be controlled by an Android-running smartphone or tablet.
Google appeared to be in the unenviable position of following up a strong act—Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference took place in the same venue weeks earlier—but it proved itself more than up for the challenge, exciting the crowd most not with its answer to the iPad but with two products unlike anything it might have occurred to us to hope for.
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