Google made a mistake in trying to present Google Glass as a cool and fashionable device, rather than focusing on utility when it was first being promoted to the general public. That’s the conclusion of Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media and longtime internet/software entrepreneur, who spoke Thursday at the Web Summit conference in [...]

Google made a mistake in trying to present Google Glass as a cool and fashionable device, rather than focusing on utility when it was first being promoted to the general public.

That’s the conclusion of Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media and longtime internet/software entrepreneur, who spoke Thursday at the Web Summit conference in Dublin, Ireland.

Although the session wasn’t specifically about Glass, host Tom Chesire of Sky News asked the panelists why Glass hasn’t seemed to capture the public’s imagination. O’Reilly said he thinks Google took the wrong marketing angle.

“I think Google wanted to be too cool, and they should’ve said we want to be useful,” O’Reilly told the Summit attendees. “Being cool is hard. The history of fashion is littered with failure, but [it's better] if you’re delivering real utility.”

O’Reilly went on to say that he would’ve preferred to see Google put Glass on a doctor rather than promoting it through models and the fashion industry. Google’s first true public promotion of Glass came in September 2012, when the company partnered with Diane Von Fustenberg and had her models wearing Glass on the runway at New York Fashion Week. A year later, Vogue magazine ran a 12-page spread featuring hip photos of models wearing Glass. Google then partnered again with Von Furstenberg on the DVF Made For Glass collection of stylish frames for ladies.

The device, meanwhile, has been proven to have great utility in the healthcare field, going all the way back to June 2013, when doctors Rafael Grossman and Pedro Guillen became the first two surgeons to use Glass in the operating room (on consecutive days, even).

Generally Optimistic on Wearables

The Summit session was about wearable technology in general, and most of the discussion was positive in nature. O’Reilly said he’s a big fan of his Samsung Gear smartwatch, and called the Google Now integration its “killer app.” He also predicted that speech recognition and voice commands will be a popular use case for wearable devices.

Co-panelist Liam Casey, of manufacturing giant PCH, said the wearable tech available now is “pretty boring,” but both speakers agreed it’s still the very early days and devices will improve in time.

The post Tim O’Reilly: Google’s Mistake With Glass Was Trying To Be Cool appeared first on Glass Almanac.

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