Google Glass Is Now Being Discontinued

Google will stop selling its “smart” glasses, Google Glass, with immediate effect. The third version of the data glasses with a built-in mini display is now being retired. It is the second time in the last ten years that the end of Google Glass has been announced.

As Google has now announced in a support document, the Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2 will also be taken off the market with immediate effect. The first generation of the product came out in 2013, but the price of $1,500 was already considered overpriced back then. Google then gave up the first generation of Google Glass in early 2015.

Three product generations in ten years

Around two years later, Google launched a second generation of its augmented reality glasses, which looked only slightly different but had new hardware on board. With the second product generation, the focus of marketing changed and Google Glass was only offered to corporate customers.

In 2019, Google once again updated the Enterprise edition of its smart glasses, introducing improved hardware in the form of the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1 processor. With its reduced power consumption, the chip is ideally suited for AR and VR devices and once again provided a decent performance boost.

Google only wants to support the Glasses on the market until September, but will then give up support completely. Although Google Glasses will continue to work after the date in mid-September, Google will then no longer deliver any software or updates. The “Meet The Glass” app may then no longer work either.

Google does not give any reasons for the end of the last generation of Google Glasses on its support page but asserted in a statement to CNET that it is still working on AR products and wants to continue pursuing the concept. The peculiarity of Google Glass is the positioning of a prism that makes the content displayed on a small mini-display visible in front of the wearer’s eye.