When Google Glass was launched in April 2012 almost everyone got excited. Augmented Reality was the star of the hype cycle back then, and the possibilities for the device seemed endless. 

Three years later the product collapsed. Privacy and security issues proved to be too important both for Google and users, which became less and less interested in a technology that made us all look a little dumb.

It was expensive, too.

Why would Google launch another version of Google Glass? One would expect that this time the things that failed on the previous version would be corrected. 

They aren’t. Google Glass is still a niche product, enterprise focused, with a very limited set of use cases. It’s a little more powerful and has a better, bigger battery, but again, privacy issues are still there and users will look as dumb as they looked a few years ago. 

And it is as expensive as the previous version. 

There’s another big problem for Google Glass. As it happened (happens) with smartwatches, this device solves a problem that didn’t exist in the first place. Everything that Google Glass does can be done on a phone, and in fact Apple —with its ARkit— seems to have understood this better than Google. 

I’m affraid Google Glass is mostly useless: without real differentiation and really special use cases, it’s little more than an expensive business toy. Good luck with that, Google.