By Damon Brown, PCWorld Feb 22, 2012 4:26 PM – If bad cell phone etiquette annoys you, then Google goggles might just put you over the edge. Within the blink of eye, tilt of the head, a wireless connection to the Internet, and a pair of Google Android-based goggles your know-it-all friend is guaranteed to drive you crazy with random facts over coffee or movie trivia (compliments of IMDB) at the Cineplex.
Google will debut digital glasses by the end of the year, according to the New York Times. That’s right: Android-based lenses overlaying your world with information like maps and data. We all knew this augmented reality product was eventually coming, but it is now looking literally like a disaster (or more) waiting to happen.
How They Work
Here’s how you MIGHT look in the Google glasses….We’ll apparently pay between $250 and $600 for glasses with one computerized lens, PCWorld’s Daniel Ionescu noted earlier Wednesday. The lens will be a contextual heads-up display that can tell you, for instance, how far you are from your destination. They aren’t designed for continuous wear, however.
Like Android phones, these goggles will be licensed to third-party companies and will use a 3G or 4G connection to download data. And how will you control the menus? By nodding and bobbing your head.
Watch out for that tree!
Early reports say that the glasses aren’t designed for everyday wear, but that’s akin to saying that smartphones aren’t meant to be carried all day or home computers were only for certain tasks–before we carried our smartphones all day and used home computers for most tasks. I doubt that Apple planned on people texting while walking, either.
Glasses are actually the final piece to Google’s mission: To know what a user doing every single moment of the day. The search giant already is unifying some 60-odd products into one log-in for continuous online tracking. And, as we reported last week, it’s enticing you to use Google to come up with those web passwords.
Yeah, the digital glasses will be pretty strange and, at worse, pretty dangerous. Here are the very likely problems with Google’s ambitious product.
Google’s power, however, comes from knowing everything you do online. By wearing Android-powered glasses, you’re giving Google unprecedented access to:
Your location at all timesYour most common interactionsYour closest companions through facial recognitionYour eating, shopping, and traveling habits
Copyright – PC World
