Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently shared an important tip that he said he learned from one of the company’s biggest hardware failures. During a talk at Stanford for the engineering school’s centennial year, Google and Alphabet co-founder Sergey Brin recalled Google Glass failure. Brin spoke about Glass failure when a Stanford student asked him, “What mindset should aspiring entrepreneurs, like myself, adopt to avoid repeating earlier mistakes?” To this Brin replied, smilingly, “When you have your cool, new wearable device idea, really fully bake it before you have a cool stunt involving skydiving and airships,” Brin said. “That’s one tip I would give you.”Brin went on to add, “I think I tried to commercialize it too quickly, before, you know, we could make it more, you know, as cost-effectively as we needed to and as polished as we needed to from a consumer standpoint and so forth.” Brin further shared that how he thought that the launch of Google Glass is his Steve Jobs moment. “I sort of, you know, jumped the gun and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m the next Steve Jobs, I can make this thing. Ta da,'” Sergey Brin said. For those unaware, Google launched Google Glass in 2013. The company’s all-new smart glasses enabled users to view and navigate through notifications and other smart phone functions projected in front of them. It appeared to be a breakthrough moment. However, Google failed to find much takers for Google Glass. People didn’t like Google Glass’ clunky design and also the fact, as some analysts said, that it had a 5 megapixel camera crammed into it. Many also frowned at its $1,500 price tag. Google finally discontinued Google Glass for the general consumer in 2015.
Google bringing Google Glass back after more than 10 years
Earlier this year, Google Tuesday announced that the company is getting back into the smart glasses game. In May this year, Google announced a partnership with Warby Parker and the two companies said that they plan to launch a series of smart glasses as soon as next year. The glasses will be built on top of Google’s Android XR, an operating system for headset computers. The revamped version of Google Glasses will also include Google’s Gemini AI assistant that users can speak with to control the wearable devices.At the announcement, Sergey Brin said that this time Google Glasses will be different. “I’ve learned a lot,” Brin said. “I definitely feel like I made a lot of mistakes with Google Glass, I’ll be honest,” Brin said, adding that he is still a big believer in the glasses form factor. “And now it looks like normal glasses without that thing in front,” he said, referring to the visible camera that existed on the corner of the original Google Glass prototype.
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