Tesco faced online ridicule today after having launched the first shopping app for Google Glass just days before sales of the £990 “smart spectacles” were shelved.
The supermarket giant said on unveiling the free app this week that the move was “just the beginning of the journey” for Google Glass and itself.
Just two days later Google announced it is ending sales of the eyewear — only seven months after they began in the UK. The store’s app, Tesco Grocery, allows wearers of the headset to search for information about products using their voice. A shopper wearing the glasses could say: “OK Glass, find a product — cheese.” That would bring up nutritional information and add items to an online shopping basket.
Pablo Coberly, innovation engineer at Tesco Labs, said at the launch: “We want to ensure we have the means to let customers shop when and how they want, which is why we’re testing the possibilities of customers topping up their online basket with Glass.”
Twitter user David D’Souza wrote: “It isn’t fun being @Tesco. They release a #Google #Glass app and within a week Google stop selling Glass. Oops.” The halting of the Glass project represents a rare failure for tech giant Google.
The idea was backed by Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin, who presided over a spectacular unveiling when skydivers wearing Glass jumped out of a plane and beamed what they were seeing to a conference in San Francisco.
It later emerged British-born Google Glass marketing executive Amanda Rosenberg, who is said to have coined the voice command “OK, Glass”, had been in a relationship with Brin.
Google says it is committed to working on a future version of Glass but will stop taking orders next week.
