Glass failed not because of some technological limitation, but because it's a poorly thought out consumer electronics product idea. People don't want this. I can remember when it first came out, I got into endless arguments with tech friends who were *convinced* this would change the world in a gazillion ways. I argued it would flop, and big surprise -- it flopped.
What Glass really needs is a better marketing team that will instead position the product for occupational applications: surgeons, automative factory workers, security guards, rescue operators, etc. I'm not sure why Google has always chosen to market Glass as a consumer product -- it's a bit of a mystery to me. It feels like they never conducted any product market studies to understand whether or not the normal consumer would want/use this, and instead just fueled the project based on Sergey's misguided enthusiasm for building a "cool" new gadget.
And now, putting Fadel in charge of Glass? That, too, won't make a difference -- unless he drastically changes the product positioning. But I'm also sure Fadel doesn't really care -- he's probably just waiting out his retention agreement from the Nest acquisition before he departs. Must bruise the ego a bit though...to go from running one of the most successful CE products ever (iPod), to a mediocre-selling product (Nest), to an abyssmal product failure (Glass). Oh, what am I saying...dude's laughing all the way to the bank.
