Media hype is normal in the tech industry, it’s common for a new product to receive swooning coverage in its early days but when the press falls out of love with a device, it can be a harsh breakup.
Google Glass is suffering one of those harsh breakups with with writers and bloggers who were formerly gushing over the product now being publicly unimpressed with the product.
First out the blocks was Wired’s Matt Honan who described his year as a ‘glasshole’.
Honan is enthusiastic about the future of wearable devices but doesn’t see Google Glass as being ready for prime time.
Which is to say, I’m really, really excited about where Glass is going. I’m less excited about where it is.
Adding to the anti Google vibe was tech maven Robert Scoble who after his year of using the device decided it was too expensive and clumsy.
Scoble’s point is the current generation of wearable tech is too clunky and user unfriendly to solve the problems it hopes to address.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber — who wasn’t one of those gushing over Google Glass — points out this is the exactly why Windows XP tablets were such a failure in the marketplace.
Gruber also points out another similarity between Google Glass and Microsoft’s attempts at a tablet computer. Each company’s staff were reluctant to use them.
When your own employees don’t use or support your product, the problem is with the product, not the employees.
The eating your own dog food mantra cuts both ways; if your own staff find your products unattractive, then you can’t expect customers to warm to them.
In some ways it’s ironic that Google are receiving press scorn as the company plays the tech media like a violin with privileged insiders getting early access to products create an aura of exclusivity.
Glass was a classic example of this with a small group of tech journalists getting access to the product, unfortunately those insiders are turning out to be less than impressed.
Even if it turns out the Google Glass is a failure, it will have been one of the company’s brave moon shots and no doubt what they’ve learned in usablity and mobile data will be very useful to other parts of the business.