# Google Glass

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/google_glass
> Updated: 2026-08-01
> Categories: AI Hardware, AI History, Google
> License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
> From AI Wiki (https://aiwiki.ai), the free encyclopedia of artificial intelligence. Reuse freely with attribution to "AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai)".

Google Glass was a head-mounted display built by [Google](/wiki/google), first shown publicly on 2012-04-04 as "Project Glass" [1] and sold from April 2013 as the Glass Explorer Edition at $1,500 [2][9]. It placed a small transparent prism above the wearer's right eye and added a camera, a bone conduction speaker and a touchpad along the right temple, running a version of Android that paired with a phone over Bluetooth [3][4][15]. Google closed the consumer Explorer Program on 2015-01-19, relaunched the hardware twice for industrial use as Glass Enterprise Edition (2017) and Glass Enterprise Edition 2 (2019), and then stopped selling it entirely: sales ended 2023-03-15 and support ended 2023-09-15 [5][6][7][8]. It is the earliest widely known attempt at what is now called [AI glasses](/wiki/ai_glasses), and the objection raised most often against it, that nothing told bystanders when its camera was running, is the one current products are built to answer.

## Project Glass, 2012

Glass came out of Google[x], the research group later renamed X. The public reveal was a Google+ post on 2012-04-04 signed by three Google[x] staff, Babak Parviz, Steve Lee and [Sebastian Thrun](/wiki/sebastian_thrun), which said the team wanted technology "to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don't" and asked readers what they would like to see [1]. The post came with a concept film, "Project Glass: One day...", which Google said was made to demonstrate what the technology might enable. Nothing was for sale, and the post explicitly framed the release as the start of a conversation rather than a product launch [1].

The commercial announcement came at Google I/O on 2012-06-27. Sergey Brin introduced the device with a live feed from skydivers who jumped wearing Glass above San Francisco and streamed what they saw to the conference [16], then said Google would take orders for a developer version at $1,500 each, shipping the following year [2]. The offer was restricted to people attending I/O and to United States addresses, which TechCrunch reported was because of unresolved regulatory questions abroad [2]. About 2,000 developers signed up at the conference [9].

| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2012-04-04 | Project Glass revealed in a Google+ post from Google[x] [1] |
| 2012-06-27 | Brin demonstrates Glass at Google I/O; Explorer Edition preorders open to attendees at $1,500 [2] |
| 2013-02-20 | #ifihadglass competition opens 8,000 Explorer places, again at $1,500 plus tax [10] |
| 2013-04 | First Explorer Edition units collected in Mountain View, Los Angeles and New York [9] |
| 2014-04-15 | One-day public sale in the United States [11] |
| 2014-05-13 | Sales opened to any United States adult, described by Google as "a more open beta" [12] |
| 2014-06-23 | United Kingdom launch at 1,000 pounds [4] |
| 2015-01-15 | Google announces the Explorer Program will close on 2015-01-19 [6] |
| 2017-07-18 | Glass Enterprise Edition opened to more businesses through partners [7] |
| 2019-05-20 | Glass Enterprise Edition 2 announced at $999 [8][13] |
| 2023-03-15 | Sales end [5] |
| 2023-09-15 | Support ends [5] |

## The Explorer programme

The second intake was a contest. On 2013-02-20 Google invited people to post what they would do "#ifihadglass" on Google+ or Twitter in 50 words or fewer; 8,000 winners would be allowed to buy a unit at $1,500 plus tax and collect it in person in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles [10]. Only people living in the United States were eligible to apply [10]. The first units were handed over in April 2013 at Google offices in Mountain View, Los Angeles and New York, with shipping offered to buyers outside those cities [9].

Availability widened slowly. On 2014-04-15 Google ran a one-day sale, opening ordering to any United States adult for 24 hours from 6am Pacific time on a first-come basis, still at $1,500 plus sales tax [11]. On 2014-05-13 it moved to what it called "a more open beta" and sold to anyone in the United States while stocks lasted [12]. The United Kingdom followed on 2014-06-23 at 1,000 pounds, again aimed at developers rather than consumers; Glass lead Ivy Ross told the BBC the device had already been through five hardware revisions and twelve software updates [4].

Google published a short consumer specification page rather than a full datasheet. It never listed a pixel count for the Explorer display, describing it instead as "the equivalent of a 25 inch high definition screen from eight feet away" [3].

| | Glass Explorer Edition (2013-2015) | Glass Enterprise Edition 2 (2019-2023) |
|---|---|---|
| Display | Prism above the right eye, described by Google as equivalent to a 25 inch screen at eight feet [3] | 640 x 360 RGB optical display module [14] |
| Processor | Not published by Google | Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1 [8][14] |
| Operating system | Android, paired to a phone [3][4] | Android Open Source Project 8.1 [14] |
| Memory and storage | 16 GB flash, 12 GB usable [3] | 3 GB LPDDR4, 32 GB eMMC [14] |
| Camera | 5 MP stills, 720p video [3] | 8 MP, 83 degree diagonal field of view, f/2.4, up to 1080p30 [14] |
| Audio | Bone conduction transducer [3] | Mono speaker, USB and Bluetooth audio, three beam-forming microphones [14] |
| Wireless | Wi-Fi 802.11b/g 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth [3] | Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac dual band, Bluetooth 5.0 [14] |
| Capture indicator | No dedicated capture LED [15] | Green privacy LED for the camera [14] |
| Battery | "One day of typical use" [3] | 800 mAh [14] |
| Charging | Micro USB [3] | USB-C [8][14] |
| Weight | Not published by Google | 46 g without frame [14] |
| Price | $1,500 plus tax [10] | $999 [13] |

## Withdrawal from consumers, January 2015

On 2015-01-15 the Glass team posted a note titled "We're graduating from Google[x] labs". It opened with the line that "Glass started as little more than a scuba mask attached to a laptop", described the Explorer Program as "a kind of 'open beta'", and said the team had outgrown the lab and was becoming its own group inside Google. The operative sentence was short: "we're closing the Explorer Program so we can focus on what's coming next. January 19 will be the last day to get the Glass Explorer Edition" [6]. The same post pointed at industrial use as the growth area, saying "Glass at Work has been growing and we're seeing incredible developments with Glass in the workplace" [6].

Google's framing was continuity, not cancellation. The BBC reported the company insisted it was still committed to a consumer product but would stop producing Glass in its present form, gave no timescale for a successor, and moved the team out of Google X under Ivy Ross, reporting to Nest chief executive Tony Fadell [16]. Its technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones wrote in the same piece that "Google Glass is dead, at least in its present form" [16].

Google has never published a unit sales figure for Glass in any generation. The only firm number the company itself put out was the 8,000 places in the 2013 Explorer contest [10].

## Glass Enterprise Edition, 2017

The product did not disappear after 2015; it went quiet. On 2017-07-18 Glass project lead Jay Kothari posted "A new chapter for Glass" on X's blog, saying that after two years in a limited programme Glass Enterprise Edition was being opened to more businesses through a network of partners [7]. More than 50 companies had already been using it, including AGCO, DHL, Dignity Health, NSF International, Sutter Health, Boeing and Volkswagen [7].

The hardware was rebuilt around the workplace. The electronics moved into a detachable module that clips onto ordinary glasses or onto industry frames such as safety goggles, and Google said it had improved the design for long wear and increased the power and battery life [7].

The customer results Google published came from the customers themselves rather than from independent measurement, and for two of the three Google said so. Google wrote that Glass had cut machinery production time at AGCO by 25 percent and inspection time by 30 percent; DHL, using picking software from Ubimax, estimated a 15 percent gain in supply chain efficiency; GE Aviation, using Upskill's software, estimated an 8 to 12 percent improvement in mechanic efficiency [7].

Google's own materials name the two enterprise products "Glass Enterprise Edition" and "Glass Enterprise Edition 2"; the retrofitted label "EE1" does not appear in them [7][8][14]. Neither was sold through consumer retail.

## Glass Enterprise Edition 2, 2019

Glass Enterprise Edition 2 was announced on 2019-05-20, again by Kothari, this time on Google's own blog rather than X's [8]. It moved to the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1, which Google said enabled "support for [computer vision](/wiki/computer_vision) and advanced machine learning capabilities", added USB-C, a better camera and longer battery life, and gained Android Enterprise mobile device management for large deployments [8]. Google partnered with Smith Optics on Glass-compatible safety frames [8]. The post also recorded an organisational move in the opposite direction to 2015: the Glass team went from X back to Google [8]. Tom's Guide reported the price as $999 [13].

Google's own specification page for Enterprise Edition 2 is the most detailed public datasheet for any Glass device, and it lists a feature the Explorer Edition never had: a green privacy LED tied to the camera, alongside a white power LED at the rear [14].

## The end, 2023

Google's support notice, last updated 2023-03-15, is unambiguous: "As of March 15, 2023, we will no longer sell Glass Enterprise Edition. We will continue supporting Glass Enterprise Edition until September 15, 2023" [5]. The accompanying FAQ said existing devices would keep working after that date with existing software, that no software updates from Google were planned, that Google would replace faulty devices only until 2023-09-15, and that the preinstalled Meet on Glass app "may stop working at any time" after support ended [5]. System images were promised to remain available "until at least April 1, 2024" [5].

## Why it failed

The most-cited cause is the camera, and the specific complaint was the absence of any signal that it was running. Reviewing a borrowed unit in July 2013, the Guardian's Charles Arthur noted that pressing the temple button to shoot a photo or video produced "no warning to anyone around you that you're doing so, no red light, no audible click", and called it "a potential privacy concern, and very different from the situation that has pertained ever since mobile phones became camera phones" [15].

Reaction ran ahead of the hardware. In March 2013, before any Explorer had taken delivery, the 5 Point Cafe in Seattle announced on Facebook that it would be the first local business to ban Glass in advance; owner Dave Meinert explained it in terms of the bar's clientele wanting "to go there and be not known" [17]. The pattern repeated at institutional scale. When the BBC surveyed British organisations around the 2014 UK launch, the Vue cinema chain said it would ask guests to remove Glass before screenings, Starbucks said it would "politely ask" customers not to film staff, and Costa said inappropriate users would be asked to leave [4]. On 2014-10-29 the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Association of Theatre Owners updated their joint anti-theft policy to cover wearables, requiring that "other recording devices, including wearable devices, must be turned off and put away at show time" [18]. That followed a January 2014 incident in which a Glass wearer at an AMC cinema in Columbus, Ohio was questioned by Department of Homeland Security agents about illegal recording [18].

The word "Glasshole" was not coined by critics alone; Google adopted it. Its own etiquette guidance for Explorers, in circulation by early 2014 [11], listed under "Don'ts": "Be creepy or rude (aka, a 'Glasshole')", followed by advice to respect privacy and to switch Glass off wherever phone cameras were not allowed [19]. The page conceded the behaviour was a problem without stopping the label from sticking.

[Facial recognition](/wiki/facial_recognition) was the sharpest regulatory flashpoint. Members of the United States Congress wrote to Larry Page in May 2013 asking how Google would prevent unintentional data collection, protect the privacy of non-users, and whether it would implement face recognition, demanding answers by 14 June [20]. Google responded by saying it would not approve any facial recognition Glassware "at this time" and added a developer policy clause forbidding the use of the camera or microphone to identify anyone other than the user [20]. Independent developers pointed out that sideloading made the restriction largely symbolic [20].

Cost and utility mattered too. At $1,500 plus tax, or 1,000 pounds in the United Kingdom, Glass was priced far above its parts; IHS analyst Ian Fogg told the BBC in 2014 that the component cost was about $152, and said Google appeared to be using price to manage take-up [4]. Google's own battery claim was modest, "One day of typical use", with a note that video recording was more demanding [3]. The Guardian's reviewer spent about half an hour getting a unit paired, found it could not join password-protected Wi-Fi networks and that Bluetooth kept dropping, and concluded that although niche professional users would find it a boon, for the ordinary person he could not see the case for it [15].

Finally, the Explorer Program blurred what Glass actually was. Nick Bilton reported in the New York Times in February 2015 that Brin had argued for iterating in public rather than in a secret lab, over colleagues who believed the prototype was nowhere near finished; one former employee said "the team within Google X knew the product wasn't even close to ready for prime time" [21]. X head Astro Teller made the same admission at SXSW in March 2015: "The thing that we did not do well is that we allowed, and sometimes even encouraged too much attention to the program", and "we did things which encouraged people to think of this as a finished product" [22].

## What the current generation does differently

The clearest difference is the capture indicator that Glass lacked. Meta states that every pair of its AI glasses carries a white capture LED that blinks while content is being captured and that "the capture LED has no off switch"; from the second generation onward the camera is disabled automatically if the light is blocked, and Meta says it now also disables the camera when it detects the LED has been physically tampered with [23]. That is the exact objection Glass drew in 2013 [15], now handled in hardware rather than in an etiquette guide. The same convention runs through [Meta's Ray-Ban AI glasses](/wiki/meta_ray_ban_ai) and [Snap Spectacles](/wiki/snap_spectacles), and the enforcement question it raises is the main thread in current arguments about [smart glasses and privacy](/wiki/smart_glasses_privacy).

The architecture has also inverted. Glass led with a display; current mainstream eyewear leads with a camera, microphones and a [voice assistant](/wiki/voice_assistant), and treats the display as optional [25]. Google's own [Android XR](/wiki/android_xr) roadmap makes this explicit: when the platform was announced on 2024-12-12 with [Samsung](/wiki/samsung) and [Qualcomm](/wiki/qualcomm), glasses were described as putting Gemini "one tap away" for directions, translations and message summaries, "within your line of sight, or directly in your ear" [24]. At Google I/O on 2026-05-19 the company said audio glasses would launch first, in autumn 2026, with display glasses following later [25]. Where display glasses do exist, they generally use a [waveguide display](/wiki/waveguide_display) built into the lens rather than the prism that sat above the eye on Glass.

Who builds the product has changed too. Google sells no eyewear of its own today. The 2026 hardware is being made with Samsung and branded by Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, with Google supplying the platform and the assistant [25]. That contrasts with the Glass model, in which Google designed, manufactured, sold, supported and eventually discontinued the device itself, and with the vertically integrated approach of contemporaries such as [Microsoft HoloLens](/wiki/microsoft_hololens), [Magic Leap](/wiki/magic_leap) and, later, [Apple Vision Pro](/wiki/apple_vision_pro).

The last difference is what the device is for. The Explorer Edition's menu was a fixed list: search, take a picture, record a video, get directions, send a message, make a call, start a video hangout [15]. Nothing on it involved asking the glasses about what the wearer was looking at, which is the central pitch of nearly every product in the [AI glasses market](/wiki/ai_glasses_market) today and the feature Google now leads with on Android XR [24][25]. That capability arrived roughly a decade after Glass, which is why the device turns up so often in accounts of the [history of artificial intelligence](/wiki/history_of_artificial_intelligence) in consumer hardware. The [augmented reality](/wiki/augmented_reality) and [virtual reality](/wiki/virtual_reality) headsets built in the years after it, including HoloLens and Magic Leap, took the opposite route, adding optics and compute at the cost of size.

## References

1. "We think technology should work for you." Project Glass, Google+, 2012-04-04 (archived). https://web.archive.org/web/20130605083842/https://plus.google.com/+projectglass/posts/aKymsANgWBD
2. "Google Glass Explorer Edition Available For Pre-Order At Google I/O, $1,500 And Shipping Next Year." TechCrunch, 2012-06-27. https://techcrunch.com/2012/06/27/google-glass-dev-build-available-for-pre-order-at-google-io-1500-and-shipping-next-year/
3. "Tech specs." Google Glass Help, archived 2015-04-12. https://web.archive.org/web/20150412190744/https://support.google.com/glass/answer/3064128
4. "Google Glass eyewear on sale in UK." BBC News, 2014-06-23. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27926352
5. "Glass Enterprise Edition Announcement FAQ." Google, last updated 2023-03-15. https://support.google.com/glass-enterprise/customer/answer/13417888
6. "We're graduating from Google[x] labs." Google Glass, Google+, 2015-01-15 (archived). https://web.archive.org/web/20160103153353/https://plus.google.com/+GoogleGlass/posts/9uiwXY42tvc
7. "A new chapter for Glass." Jay Kothari, The Team at X, 2017-07-18 (archived). https://web.archive.org/web/20171214000250/https://blog.x.company/a-new-chapter-for-glass-c7875d40bf24
8. "Glass Enterprise Edition 2: faster and more helpful." Jay Kothari, Google, 2019-05-20. https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/devices/glass-enterprise-edition-2/
9. "A Day With Glass: First Impressions Of The Early Days Of Google's Latest Moonshot." TechCrunch, 2013-04-17. https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/17/a-day-with-glass-first-impressions-of-the-early-days-of-googles-latest-moonshot/
10. "Google launches competition to pick 'Glass Explorers' test group." The Guardian, 2013-02-20. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/feb/20/google-glass-8000-prototypes-online-competition
11. "Google puts Glass on sale in the US, for $1,500 and one day only." The Guardian, 2014-04-11. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/11/google-glass-on-sale-us
12. "Google Glass goes on sale to US public." The Guardian, 2014-05-14. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/14/google-glass-goes-on-sale-to-us-public
13. "Google Glass Lives Again: What You Get for $999." Tom's Guide, 2019-05-20. https://www.tomsguide.com/us/google-glass-enterprise-edition-2,news-30120.html
14. "Tech Specs, Glass Enterprise Edition 2." Google, archived 2021-01-25. https://web.archive.org/web/20210125002350/https://www.google.com/glass/tech-specs/
15. "Google Glass, hands-on review." Charles Arthur, The Guardian, 2013-07-02. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/02/google-glass-review-augmented-reality
16. "Google Glass sales halted but firm says kit is not dead." BBC News, 2015-01-15. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30831128
17. "Seattle drinking den bans Google Glass geeks." The Register, 2013-03-09. https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2013/03/09/seattle-drinking-den-bans-google-glass-geeks/1381137
18. "Movie Industry Officially Bans Google Glass, Other Wearable Devices." Variety, 2014-10-29. https://variety.com/2014/digital/news/movie-industry-officially-bans-google-glass-other-wearable-devices-1201342303/
19. "Glass Explorers," dos and don'ts. Google Glass Press, archived 2014-12-24. https://web.archive.org/web/20141224213337/https://sites.google.com/site/glasscomms/glass-explorers
20. "Google 'bans' facial recognition on Google Glass, but developers persist." The Guardian, 2013-06-03. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jun/03/google-glass-facial-recognition-ban
21. "Why Google Glass Broke." Nick Bilton, The New York Times, 2015-02-04 (archived). https://web.archive.org/web/20150209040609/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/style/why-google-glass-broke.html
22. "Google Dev Claims Glass Had 'Too Much Attention' During Testing." IGN, 2015-03-17. https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/03/17/teller-google-glass-had-too-much-attention-during-testing
23. "Meta's AI Glasses: Your Questions Answered." Meta Newsroom, 2026-07. https://about.fb.com/news/2026/07/metas-ai-glasses-your-questions-answered/
24. "Android XR: The Gemini era comes to headsets and glasses." Shahram Izadi, Google, 2024-12-12. https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android/android-xr/
25. "Intelligent eyewear is coming this fall." Shahram Izadi, Google, 2026-05-19. https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android/android-xr-io-2026/