Android boss reveals the unsurprising reason Google Glass ended up in the tech graveyard

At I/O 2026, Google gave us a preview of how its upcoming Android XR glasses might make our lives simpler. For anybody who’s adopted Google’s announcement for barely greater than a decade, the announcement could have summoned a way of nostalgia. That’s as a result of Google first previewed its sensible glass answer at I/O 13 years in the past. Even for those who don’t keep in mind, Android’s chief does, they usually’re grateful for what it taught them.

Sameer Samat, president of the Android ecosystem at Google, not too long ago spoke to members of the media, together with Korea’s Yonhap Information, after the Google I/O 2026 convention yesterday. Whereas discussing the new Android XR units Google showcased at the occasion yesterday, Samat spoke of the classes Google discovered from its failed Glass venture from the previous decade.

The manager mentioned the largest lesson from the lack of economic acceptance for Google Glass was that style outweighs technological enchantment.

I discovered rather a lot. An important factor I discovered is that style comes first, know-how comes second.

That’s what we’re additionally seeing with the huge enchantment of the Meta Ray-Ban and Oakley sensible glasses. Based on business analysts’ estimates, Meta has doubtless bought over 7 million models of its sensible glasses since their introduction in 2023. That’s regardless of the undeniable fact that Meta’s know-how doesn’t essentially really feel superior to what Google is anticipated to supply.

They added that Samsung performed a pivotal position in artfully combining style and know-how. In the meantime, details about the internals stays restricted, except for each pairs of glasses working on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon AR platform. Each the newly showcased merchandise can be out there round the fall this yr.

Google Glass initially launched in 2013, however failed to realize the recognition Google hoped for attributable to a number of causes. Android telephones had been nonetheless comparatively much less ubiquitous than they’re now, however, extra importantly, the know-how didn’t provide any particular edge at the time and merely served as an additional display in entrance of the consumer’s eyes. Its bloated $1,500 price ticket made the deal much more bitter for shoppers, who would possibly in any other case have thought of it at a extra approachable value. Regardless of this lack of enthusiasm, Google adopted it up with one other enterprise-grade mannequin in 2017, which met an analogous destiny.

Nevertheless, it appears to redeem itself with Gemini, which can now shoulder the majority of the duties. At I/O 2026, Google additionally talked about how its upcoming sensible glasses work in tandem with different units, together with the Pixel Watch (and, hopefully, different Put on OS watches). For glasses with shows, Google has mightier plans, which embrace a particular glazen model of Android, so that they share a few of the telephone’s duty, somewhat than simply casting the app in your line of sight. Sadly, nevertheless, these gained’t be right here till subsequent yr.