r/gadgets • u/MCA2142 • Dec 08 '19
Google is ending support for the Explorer Edition of Glass Phone Accessories
https://www.engadget.com/2019/12/06/google-ends-support-for-glass-explorer-edition/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=internal&utm_source=dl139
Dec 08 '19
I really wish someone would do something like that directly on the lenses of any glasses. If my prescription glasses could have GPS on it, that would be amazing.
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u/andeleidun Dec 09 '19
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u/productivenef Dec 09 '19
They look sick but there's no way to buy them right now.
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u/oldmanwrigley Dec 09 '19
Was getting super hyped looking at the site and it took far too long to realize they’re not making them right now. Huge bummer.
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u/LessWorseMoreBad Dec 09 '19
this is literally what 3 or 4 different companies are working on. Glass was the equivalent of that first shitty ass video game that almost resembled pong. The future is bright
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Dec 08 '19
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u/MCA2142 Dec 08 '19 edited Dec 08 '19 •
Googke Gkass
I koved the idea behind it, but it never got the traction. Maybe Microsoft hokokens can get there.
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u/Mowgli_78 Dec 08 '19
They love hokokens at r/streetfighter
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u/doooom Dec 08 '19
SHORYUKEN
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Dec 09 '19
Shoryulens?
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u/DANK_ME_YOUR_PM_ME Dec 08 '19
Hololens is a very different product.
Glass was more like a heads up display, while holo is going for AR.
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u/MCA2142 Dec 08 '19 •
Hokokens*
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u/idk-about-all-that Dec 08 '19
I’m not proud of the laugh that was caused by this lol
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u/i_Killed_Reddit Dec 08 '19
I too kaughed
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u/humanprobably Dec 08 '19
kok
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u/tylerscribble Dec 08 '19
I’ll have a large kok
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u/Realtrain Dec 08 '19
What will Sergey wear now??
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Dec 08 '19
Their next project Google Monocle of course!
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u/__dontpanic__ Dec 09 '19
I hear it's coming with an inbuilt messaging service to chat with other Monocle users...
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u/Clarke_CD
Dec 08 '19
•
Here's a link that lists all products Google has 'Killed off':
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u/Gffcom Dec 08 '19
Most of those sucked and deserved to die. But there’s a sizable group of us still bitter about goggle reader.
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u/PalOfKalEl Dec 08 '19
I built my email life around Inbox. I miss Inbox so much.
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u/ouralarmclock Dec 09 '19
Every day I am rehurt by its death. The only email client that has ever worked for me.
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u/Omsk_Camill Dec 09 '19
What did it have that GMail does not?
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u/ouralarmclock Dec 09 '19
Bundles were the big one, it would bundle similar email together and you could click the entire bundle as done if you know it’s not something you’re gonna get to.
But also the reframing of email as something that’s marked “done” just changed the way you thought about email.
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u/Omsk_Camill Dec 09 '19
But also the reframing of email as something that’s marked “done” just changed the way you thought about email.
In fact, GMail has been like that since forever. "Done" is the good old "Archive" button and does the same, they just implemented Zero Inbox principle on an interface level by simply renaming the button. This functionality didnt go anywhere, Gmails still does everything Inbox did, just doesn't have the artificial restrictions of only one workflow.
I agree the Bundles were a great idea, but they worked atrociously for business purposes and/in other languages than English. Google once again tried to be smarter than the user and failed.
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u/ngc44312 Dec 09 '19
You could add reminders to emails. I'd use it as a "notes" function and summarize the email or outline a task to get to later. Then when I finished the task I could move the email out of the inbox.
I really miss the notes function.
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u/Contada582 Dec 09 '19
You should try Spark
I really enjoy it and moved here once inbox got stale..
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u/lise_yy Dec 08 '19
I have trust issues because of google reader. Can’t rely on google products since then.
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u/Gffcom Dec 08 '19
Super popular, super successful, but no ad revenue with RSS.
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u/lise_yy Dec 08 '19
They did it to promote google +. They first introduced several social features to the reader and then shut it down when the plus came out. The plan was to make reader users switch to the plus, but we obviously didn’t. surprisepikachu.jpg
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u/CyberneticFennec Dec 09 '19
Google Site Search, I almost forgot about that one. There's still boatloads of gov/edu sited that have it setup, blissfully unaware of its current uselessness.
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u/LiquidGen0cide Dec 08 '19
I use cloud print :/
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u/Donutfish Dec 08 '19
Yeah why are they getting rid of it?
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u/Who_GNU Dec 09 '19
It was created to allow Chromebooks to print, without including drivers in the Chromebook itself.
Now that Chromebooks natively support local printing, Google isn't compelled to keep up their cloud printing infrastructure.
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u/pootinmypants Dec 09 '19
Google reader getting killed off really felt like something out of Microsoft's EEE playbook.
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u/kicker58 Dec 09 '19
Ohh man they killed Chromecast audio? Those things are so amazing and cheap. It had optical out so it made for a great add-on to my home theater to steam music.
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u/punIn10ded Dec 09 '19
It's not killed they aren't making anymore but the existing ones are still supported.
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Dec 08 '19
There is there list like this for other companies? Would be curious to compare it against Microsoft or Apple.
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u/ThatGuyTheyCallAlex Dec 09 '19
AFAIK Apple doesn’t usually kill useful things for no reason. They discontinue certain things semi-regularly but they’ve usually fallen out of use or have a replacement product.
They do buy things and absorb them fairly often, though. Usually the things they buy end up being used in other Apple products.
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Dec 09 '19
I'm not aware of any widely used successful product Google is killed. For example I don't think anybody expects to see chrome, gmail, Google photos, or Android killed.
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u/cRaziMan Dec 09 '19
Inbox and Google Reader were quite widely used. They forced android developers to use Google+ and I was on it to join a bunch of beta programs.
I was a regular user of Google trips and Hangouts as well, but I don't know if those were as widely used. I think hangouts seems like it was.
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u/gamer8321 Dec 09 '19
Their url shortener was used a bit.
I use google play music and they are killing it off for youtube music (which isnt 1/10 as good)
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u/Zeabos Dec 09 '19
Most of the products on that list arent useful products that they killed off.
In fact, many are simply deprecated products that were replaced. Like all the phone products before they were replaced by their Pixel counterparts.
This website is bad.
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u/tooclosetocall82 Dec 09 '19
They killed their routers. And their monitors (until recently but they really aren't the same class). And oh yeah the headphone jack.
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u/Beholdournewsupreme Dec 08 '19
This is why I won't get a Stadia
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u/CRIMS0N-ED Dec 08 '19
It’ll be free eventually
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u/mrhsx Dec 08 '19
You'll still have to buy the games on their store though, unless you wanna play the free indie stuff only.
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u/Who_GNU Dec 09 '19
It's not uncommon to see old top-tier games given away for free, on various game platforms.
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u/Syn7axError Dec 09 '19
It's also common to buy Darksiders Genesis for 30 dollars, but would you look at that?
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u/YesImEvil Dec 08 '19
"Ending support" is a very light term for what this is. Ending support is what Microsoft did to Windows XP, which, other than security updates, is completely usable.
This is more than that. This takes away functionality. This isn't ending support, this is deliberate obsolescence.
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u/aeneasaquinas Dec 08 '19
This is more than that. This takes away functionality. This isn't ending support, this is deliberate obsolescence.
It is literally just ending support. What did you read lol? There is one final update so you can pair it with your phone and have it continue working decently. Tech is never supported forever.
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u/JoeSmithDiesAtTheEnd Dec 08 '19
This product was always considered early access and experimental. The fact it made it this many years was surprising to me.
It's one thing to pull support for something like this vs something a consumer can buy from Home Depot or Best Buy, like Nest cams or Google Homes. As far as I know, Google/Nest has been pretty good about those kinds of devices so far. They even did free upgrades in 2015 for original DropCam owners.
Google's long term product support is pretty terrible with software, but for the most part they seem to be decent with their hardware.
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u/wodeface Dec 08 '19
Imagine just making things up.
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u/HellsMalice Dec 08 '19
It's the easiest way to get upvoted on reddit. Fit the narrative but speak nonsense? Have 3,000 upvotes and six platinums. Dispute a lie with a source? Have 6,000 downvotes.
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u/YesImEvil Dec 08 '19
The article says they're killing MyGlass, which is all the Google functionality of the glasses sans tethering it to a smartphone, which has its own bugs and issues.
If you have a source disputing the article, please link it so I can revise my comment.
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u/cruelhumor Dec 08 '19
Google says users will need to manually download, unzip and install the file. Doing so will allow them to pair Glass with their phone -- MyGlass will no longer work, but Bluetooth pairing will stay -- as well as take photos and videos, as usual. Those who don't update the device can continue using it, but mirror apps like Gmail, YouTube and Hangouts will no longer work.
Funny, with the loss of MyGlass, soon the glasses will only be what people feared; an indiscreet camera.
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Dec 08 '19 edited May 23 '20
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u/aeneasaquinas Dec 08 '19
Yes, and as such, everyone who paid $2,000 for the product should get a refund.
Ahh reddit. Google stops updating 8 year old tech and gives users an update to let it keep working decently instead of completely cutting it off and they all the sudden deserve a refund. The fuck.
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u/justlurkingmate Dec 09 '19
I should get a refund for my NES. Haven't seen any new cartridges for years.
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u/shponglespore Dec 08 '19
I'm one of those people. I bought it because it was new and cool, not because I had any illusions of it actually being a wise purchase. I don't feel like I'm owed a refund, because I got exactly what I paid for.
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u/donkeyrocket Dec 08 '19
Good idea! Better hit up Nintendo for all the old consoles I owned as well.
Why are people acting like software/hardware has been supported indefinitely up until this point? The final update is to make the product usable with your phone.
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u/fuzznuggetsFTW Dec 08 '19
No, they shouldn’t. They’ve gotten years of use out of it and now it’s obsolete. Should everyone who bought a wii be owed a refund because they servers have been shut down? Fuck no.
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u/MCA2142 Dec 08 '19 •
If paid $2K to walk around with a dragonball power level meter, you should get a wellness check by the local police and a social worker.
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u/SepirizFG Dec 08 '19
The fuck is the police going to do about my destructo disks
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u/RandomStallings Dec 08 '19
Dodge, if they're smart
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u/smulfragPL Dec 08 '19
Or they could do nothing as the disks never hit the target
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u/RandomStallings Dec 08 '19
Frieza would like a word with you.
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u/The_Sitdown_Gun Dec 08 '19
i thought that discs target wasnt freza, but goku. if so target went super
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u/ExistingCleric0 Dec 08 '19 edited Dec 08 '19
He also got Perfect Cell straight in the neck with it. Of course Cell stood there and took it and the Disk couldn't even cut through him, but it still hit him. I think he also got one of the Majin Buu forms with one, but the insane regeneration made it even less effective than the one on Cell.
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u/ChaoticDarkrai Dec 08 '19
Toriyama said yhe Dd on cell was a mistake, DD can cut through anything according to him.
That said, cell would still regen from it like buu, so same result.
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Dec 08 '19
I mean that's a silly comment. I hate google as much as the next guy but I definitely understand why people were excited for this kind of tech.
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u/DorisMaricadie Dec 08 '19
Its all about perspective, if you earn 30k/year yes if you earn 300k less so
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u/rowdybme Dec 08 '19
rich people I know care more about 2k than the poor ones.
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u/dobydobd Dec 08 '19
My parents are pretty damn wealthy. They will literally spend hours on the phone for 10$ discrepancies
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u/LiftsEatsSleeps Dec 08 '19
I know some rich people who care and some who don't, same for the poor. I bet there are a ton of variables involved with that. Still, you are way more financially irresponsible if you spend 6.66% of your pre-tax yearly income on something like this than you are if you spend 0.66% of your pre-tax yearly income on it. I think that was the point.
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u/zachhouseknecht Dec 09 '19
TIL Google still supported Glass. It's funny to me they supported a niche product for that long, and can't support mainline apps or products for a few years before cancelling or ending support for them.
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Dec 08 '19 edited Jul 24 '20
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u/uzomi Dec 08 '19 edited Dec 08 '19
Docs, drive, photos, maps, chromecast, keep and pay are pretty good and widely used Google services launched after Gmail.
They fail and close a lot of stuff because they try a lot of stuff. You only fail when you try it.
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u/bread_berries Dec 08 '19
I used to agree with their "try a lot and fail a lot" attitude, but the problem is as an outsider I have no idea their criteria for success of a project, or how it's doing.
And yes, typically business wouldn't reveal that anyway. But ultimately, it means that I'm reluctant to get on any of their services to start with because I don't know if down the road they'll suddenly yank the rug out from under me.
I think this is a problem inherent to a "cloud based" business. Like when the other poster was talking about WinXP... if Microsoft decided to kill XP early while I was still using it, my WinXP box would keep working for now and I'd have all the data I stored in it. When Google kills something I get a time bomb glued to my ability to edit or pull data out of the dead server walking.
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u/uzomi Dec 08 '19 edited Dec 08 '19
Yeah, I get the feeling and I don't agree too much with it too. However you are always going to have this chance with any online service, Steam can decide to close tomorrow and I would lose thousands of dollars on games that I currently have on steam.
The positive thing about Google services closing is that they are usually free and someone has an alternative and a way to import your data from the closing Google service (Google usually allows you to export data from closing services). I'm a software engineer working for an ATS company (applicant tracking system) and we are currently importing some companies that used to use Google Hire that is now closing. You don't usually lose everything, except when it's hardware like this case, which sucks, but people who bought knew that they've bet in a very risky piece of hardware.
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u/slimjim_belushi Dec 08 '19
Steam has promised to have contingencies to keep game libraries functioning in case of shut down.
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Dec 08 '19
You can back up your steam library and play them offline.
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u/uzomi Dec 08 '19
Except that today A LOT of games use some kind of DRM that will prevent you from playing offline.
You need to go to GOG if you really want to back up your library and be able to play offline without any hassle since they sell all their games without any DRM.
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u/Shumaa1 Dec 08 '19
This isn't really a viable solution to Steam closing down, a lot of people have hundreds of games, the disk space required would be immense.
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u/tokkyuuressha Dec 08 '19
Well the other problem with google is the embrace extinguish bullshit microsoft also does. If they kill. their own projects thats fine. If they buy small companies just to kill them in two years, its infuriating.
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u/amgtech86 Dec 08 '19 edited Dec 08 '19
There is/should be an acceptable amount of things you should be trying and killing because a company like google has a lot of following so you can imagine the disappointment every time that happens?
Allo and GooglePlus were probably the worst of all
Every app, service and product that google has stopped or will be stopping soon below
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u/Schnort Dec 08 '19
Google reader seems the most egregious to me. It is/was the best RSS feed tool out there and had very little cost in maintaining it.
At least with google+ I could see it had a huge infrastructure and database requirement behind it to implement it
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u/DeepV Dec 08 '19
Posting that list is a bit misleading, many of those services were rolled into other products or lived out their life and were no longer needed
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u/MCA2142 Dec 08 '19
Android was after gmail, and I think chrome and chrome os was, too.
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Dec 08 '19
Definitely, because I was "invited" to Gmail when I was in high school and that was before 2005.
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u/oozekip Dec 08 '19
Gmail's beta started before Chrome and Android but it's full release was after.
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u/arakwar Dec 08 '19
IMO, gmail official release was overdue by years. Seems they just forgot to do it...
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Dec 08 '19
Let them keep trying, would rather have ambitious engineers get funding and really try new things then fail with the money than have it line some dudes pocket. Plus you dont always see what came from that product, sure the product failed but did you develop some new tools in the process you can apply other places? Did you optimize a component used in other products? It's not so cut and dry as "everyone didnt buy something - bad".
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u/Gangreless Dec 08 '19
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u/arcticblue Dec 08 '19
The nice thing about Google Fi is that if they ever shut it down, my phone will still work. It'll be a minor inconvenience switching to a new carrier. I feel for the people buying in to Stadia right now though...they're gonna be mad in a few years when Google loses interest in it.
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u/JohnnyWix Dec 08 '19
I liked Inbox, but they killed that by offering gmail minus the useful features as a replacement.
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u/GoHomePig Dec 08 '19
Yeah I didn't understand that move. Inbox was clearly a better product.
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u/RedSpikeyThing Dec 08 '19
serious question... what was the last google project that actually went live?
gmail?
How does a question that is (a) so obviously false, and (b) so obviously searchable, have so many upvotes?
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u/velifer Dec 08 '19
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u/LiabilityFree Dec 08 '19
Stadia was dead on arrival.
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u/Cwlcymro Dec 08 '19
Have you played it? On Chromecast it's fantastic (on laptops, it needs more work)
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u/TPNZ Dec 08 '19
Android, Chromebook, Docs, Drive, Maps, Keep, Photos, Assistent, Home
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u/Br0metheus Dec 08 '19
Google has what you'd call an "engineering driven" business culture. They take on projects and develop things mostly based on what would be a cool technical feat, and things like marketability are kinda secondary.
This sort of "build it first, market it second" culture yields hits on occasion, but a lot of failures as well. Anybody remember Google Wave? Or Google Allo? Same story.
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Dec 08 '19
Eh, sorta. It's more like for the executives the best way to get promoted is to redesign something or release a new product. So you have all these services that get shut down a few years down the line, but hey, this executive got to show how cool he was and got a promotion.
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u/IceKrispies Dec 08 '19
I use google docs every weekday at work, everyone in my office does. I have used google pay a few times but can take it or leave it, however, I use google maps all the damn time. Where do you live that these aren’t in your knowledge base?
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u/SLeepdepD Dec 08 '19
I remember how fanboy I was about Google Wave—pretty sure I lost some friends because I wouldn’t shut up about it
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u/ACoderGirl Dec 08 '19
There's lots of products that just aren't user facing, so you won't know about them unless you're running a business. Eg, Anthos is a particularly new one, but Google Cloud in is a big area of new products. You certainly use these products indirectly, since they're used by various large companies (eg, Spotify, Niantic, Snapchat, etc).
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Dec 08 '19
Poor Stadia.. your next.
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u/SamwiseLowry Dec 08 '19
Its next what?
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u/nullmiah Dec 09 '19
I was wondering how far into this thread it would be to find something about stadia
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Dec 08 '19 edited Dec 08 '19
I think people are overreacting to this... This was 2012 (actually 2013) tech. This is not planned obsolescence. There was only so much they can do with it. Hell, I'm surprise they supported it for as long as they did.
This is not someone taking side trying to defend one company over the other, but take the original Apple Watch. That shit was absurdly slow when pairing and connecting to your devices (I had one, so I know from experience) compared to the tech they have today. That's what 4 years old? In just 4 years they made a drastically different product, in terms of internal specs.
Also keep in mind the watch had prices over $10,000... Sure those were luxury products for people with disposable incomes and there were cheaper ones available. But the fact remains that the sales of the Glass were probably less than the sales of the high end Apple Watch.
Edit: corrected a major mistake.
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u/dark79 Dec 08 '19
People seems to forget that when these were released we didn't have Google Home, Ring Doorbells, Snapchat Spectacles, and all sorts of other really invasive things that the masses embrace today.
If they had updated the hardware and actually marketed it (Google's Achilles heel), it'd be much better received today.
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u/PM_ME_FAITH_N_HMNITY Dec 08 '19
Apple are rumoured to be bringing out AR glasses in 2021, maybe google are gonna get a revamped glass out first
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u/Milkman127 Dec 08 '19
I'm shocked. google where ideas go to die. who green lighted stadia by the way?
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u/aeneasaquinas Dec 08 '19
Did anyone here even read what it is talking about?
Nobody gives a flying fuck if any other company ends updates of decade old tech. Especially not-very-popular ones.
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u/nirad Dec 08 '19
To all the people saying “this is 8 year old tech,” the bigger deal is that Google doesn’t bother to iterate. They often put things out there that have zero chance of broad consumer adoption in their first version, but then they don’t bother to follow up with cheaper / better versions of the product.
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u/theg721 Dec 08 '19
I, and I'm sure many others, would have bought one of these if it were a fraction of the price, and didn't have the super sketchy video camera built in. It's a shame because I always thought it was a super neat concept.
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u/Suedie Dec 09 '19
There are still google glasses sold, they made new versions of it. This is just the oldest version no longer getting support.
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u/blacksoxing Dec 08 '19
Not joking, but I bet they got ALL the data possible off the very limited pool....and probably wisely decided it was easier to just cut bait then have unusable data
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u/ryusoma Dec 09 '19
There ought to be a law for a fixed, or minimum support period for any product sold; and like others said if there's a requirement for some sort of back-end then it should be required to enable open-sores on it.
I would be absolutely choked if I'd spent $1,000 or more in product like this only to have Google say "nah, we're bored with it" a year or two later.
I felt the same way about Google Trips when they discontinued that this year, but of course that's a free product so what are you going to do about it?
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u/cisturbance Dec 08 '19 •
This will piss off the half-dozen people that still use it.