Google Will Stop Selling Glass Next Week
Google is pressing the brakes on its Google Glass rollout. The company will stop selling the smart glasses to individual customers through its Explorer program after Jan. 19, according to a post on Glass's Google+ page. The company will continue to support its Glass at Work initiative, which aims to sell the glasses to enterprise customers. Glass is also moving out of the Google X research lab to become its own independent unit. It will be headed by Google executive Ivy Ross, who has been leading the Glass team since last summer. That team will now report to Nest CEO Tony Fadell, though Glass is not actually becoming a part of Nest, most well-known for making smart home equipment. Google Glass, which has seen its official release delayed multiple times, has courted its fair share of controversy thanks to privacy concerns over its use. Google released a guide on how to avoid being a "Glasshole" using the wearable device, which can take pictures, record video and look up content on the Internet using voice commands. Google offered no timetable for when a new version of Glass would be available to the general public. However, the Wall Street Journal reported in December that a new version of Glass with a processor developed by Intel would launch sometime in 2015.