Google Glass Invented a Word for Its Own Customers, Then Used It Officially

Google Glass was a small prism mounted above your right eye on a titanium band, running a 640 by 360 display, a five megapixel camera, 720p video and bone-conduction audio. Google’s own specification page described the display as the equivalent of a 25 inch high definition screen from eight feet away, which was true in the sense that a postage stamp held close to your face is the equivalent of a billboard.

The Launch Was Genuinely Spectacular

Credit where it is due. At Google I/O on 27 June 2012, Sergey Brin interrupted his own keynote to run a live demonstration in which four skydivers wearing Glass jumped from an airship over San Francisco and landed on the roof of Moscone West, streaming first-person video into the hall. Stunt cyclists then rode the roof. Two more people abseiled down the side of the building. The group walked into the keynote and handed Brin a pair on stage, at which point he announced developer pre-orders at $1,500.

Nobody has topped this. It remains the most extravagant thing anyone has done to sell eyewear.

The Terms of Sale Were Less Charming

The Explorer agreement stated that you may not resell, loan, transfer or give your device to any other person, and that doing so without authorisation entitled Google to deactivate the device, with neither party receiving any refund, support or warranty. This surfaced in April 2013 when somebody tried to sell a pair on eBay and the bidding passed ninety thousand dollars before the auction was pulled.

You did not own the fifteen-hundred-dollar computer on your face. You were holding it.

The Word

Here is the detail that makes Glass permanently interesting. The insult did not come from a hostile press. The earliest confirmed use in print is Ryan Lawler writing in TechCrunch on 28 January 2013, a publication broadly enthusiastic about the product, who noted simply that he liked to call them Glassholes and promised not to say it to anyone’s face.

Thirteen months later, in its official Explorer etiquette guide of February 2014, Google published a list of things not to do. One of the entries reads, in full and in the company’s own words: be creepy or rude, also known as a Glasshole. The guidance continues that you should respect others, not get snappy when questioned, and remember that a quick demo can go a long way.

A corporation printed the slur invented for its customers, in its own documentation, as a heading. The same document advises against reading War and Peace on Glass, and against water skiing, bull riding or cage fighting while wearing it.

What Wearing One Was Actually Like

Mat Honan wore a pair for a year and wrote it up for WIRED in December 2013, and his account remains the best thing written about the device. People get angry at Glass, he reported. They get angry at you for wearing Glass. They talk about you openly. It inspires the most aggressive of passive aggression. His summary was that Glass is a class divide on your face, and that when strangers said look at that asshole, he always sort of agreed.

Brin, meanwhile, had explained the motivation at TED in early 2013 by describing smartphone use as emasculating, complaining that you are standing around just rubbing this featureless piece of glass, and asking whether that is really what you are meant to do with your body. He asked this while wearing a camera on his eyebrow.

Astro Teller of Google X later offered the finest defence anyone managed: Glass is the world’s worst spy camera, and if you want to surreptitiously take photos, he would not use Glass. Correct, and not reassuring.

Where It Went

Consumer Glass ended on 15 January 2015, with 19 January the last day to buy one. Google announced it as graduating from the X labs rather than dying, and the website thanked people for exploring. Battery life had been the quiet killer throughout: Google promised one full day of typical use, and Engadget’s review measured about five hours, or a couple of hours if you actually recorded video, which was the entire point of owning one.

It came back as an enterprise product in July 2017, aimed at factory floors and operating theatres where a screen on your face genuinely helps and nobody in a hangar cares how you look. Enterprise Edition 2 followed in May 2019 at $999. Google stopped selling it on 15 March 2023 and ended support on 15 September 2023, with no further software updates planned.

Eleven years, two consumer relaunches, one genuinely magnificent skydive, and the lasting cultural contribution was a compound noun that the manufacturer eventually put in its own manual. Every face computer sold since has been quietly designed around not earning a second one.