Google will no longer sell its Glass AR smart glasses for businesses starting March 15 and will only support the device until September 15 of this year. The tech giant has posted those details with a notice reading “Thank you for over a decade of innovation and partnership” on Glass’s official website, first reported by 9to5Google. This marks the end of the company’s augmented reality wearable, which got its start as a consumer product that sparked interest from early adopters but never captured the market.
About four years after it was first available, Google released a rebooted version of Glass for Business, aimed at companies whose workers could use augmented reality to help them do their jobs. It was designed to be more comfortable to wear and with the ability to “withstand the rigors of work environments.” It also had a larger screen, a foldable design, and a faster processor. Then in 2019, Google released the Glass Enterprise Edition 2 glasses, which looked pretty much the same as its predecessors but came with more powerful hardware and software.
Google says that existing units will still work after September 15, but it will no longer roll out any software updates after that. The company will also only replace devices up to that date, and the pre-installed Meet on Glass app, Google’s video conferencing service on the glasses, could also stop working anytime after September 15.
Last year, Google began testing its next-generation augmented reality glasses that it unveiled during its I/O developer conference. It’s not entirely clear if those glasses will ever be released, but company spokesman Patrick Seybold said the edge that Google remains “deeply committed to AR” and that it “has been incorporating AR into many [of its] products”.
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