Google Discontinues it AR Glasses for Second Time in a Decade

The search engine giant Google has been involved in VR and AR for years, releasing Google Glass in April 2013 as its first venture into smart eyewear sales. Yet, the $1,500 glasses were primarily viewed as pricey and invasive, and Google discontinued sales of the first generation of Glass in January 2015.  Now, the company has announced that it will discontinue selling its Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2 (second generation) augmented reality (AR) glasses. The company has halted the AR glasses project for the second time in the last decade, as per the announcement.

Two years later, Google re-entered the market with a similar hardware redesign of Glass. Instead of targeting consumers, Google directed the Glass Business Edition at the business sector, particularly factories and doctors. In 2019, a faster Qualcomm XR1 chip, a low-power processor built for lightweight AR and VR devices, was added to the most recent version.

However, Google announced on Wednesday that it would discontinue selling the glasses, although it will continue to support the AR glasses until September 15. Google stated that the glasses will continue to function after September 15, but it has no plans to release software upgrades and the Meet the Glass app that comes preinstalled may stop functioning after that date.

When questioned, neither the help page nor a Google person could provide a justification for the discontinuation. However,  a Google spokesperson said,

We’ve been integrating augmented reality (AR) into many Google products for years, and we’ll continue to explore methods to offer new, unique AR experiences to our entire product range.

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