In perhaps one of the wildest product demos in recent memory, Google, along with co-founder Sergey Brin re-introduced the world to Google Glass, the Search giant’s new Realty HUD glasses project. During the Google I/O keynote, four men equipped with Google Glasses jumped from a blimp and skydived down to the Moscone Center in San Francisco, where the event was being held, all the while, the audience got to experience the jump from a Google+ Hangout. Joinin the skydivers were bicyclists and climbers, who repelled down the side of the building to converge inside and join Brin.
“This is not a consumer device,” Brin said to the audience at the Google I/O show “You have to want to be on the bleeding edge. That’s what this is designed for.”
That’s painfully clear when you consider the price tag of a single pair of Google Glasses is a cool $1,500. Brin and his Google X team remain confident about the device and its future, “Someday we would like to make this so fast that you don’t feel like, if you have a question, you have to go seek the answer. We’d like it to be so fast that you just know it. We’d like to be able to empower people to know information very very quickly,” said one of the team’s designers.
While I’m sure there will be many people who will run out and buy these when they become available next year, it may take a while before they have the courage to wear them in public without feeling a little ridiculous. Maybe for $1,500, they should come with an invisibility function.