Google Pushes for Glass Adoption, Finds Mixed Response
Google announced its new “Glass for Work” initiative today. The marketing campaign aims to increase adoption among business owners of Google Glass. The augmented reality wearable technology which the Silicon Valley giant has been fine tweaking for ages now is not faring too well in most professional sectors. The problem? With the exception of law enforcement, medicine, manufacturing, and athletics, industries where a hands-free internet connection has huge benefits, most business owners and their employees just don’t see the point. Glass for Work aims to demonstrate to potential customers how Google Glass can benefit their business productivity and up their profitability.
Like Gmail, Drive, Google Wants Glass to Be a Way of Life
Google has never been one to go down without a fight. Google+, for example, long believed to be a flash in the pan, continues to receive new updates from the tech behemoth. Most notably, the company recently made it so that Google+ accounts were required to post comments on the wildly popular YouTube.
It’s no stretch to say that Google doesn’t want to have another Google+ on its hand. After all, what firm wants to spend exorbitant amounts of money on a product, only to spend much more over multiple years trying to make it a success? Glass does show some promise, both for consumers and a company who wants another piece of technology that its consumers use every single day. Thanks to Gmail, Drive, and YouTube, Google earned $15.7 billion in revenue in 2013. Glass, like Gmail, like YouTube, and like the Google search engine, could be another powerful platform for marketers to spread brand awareness on, and, potentially, another cash cow for Google. If the company is successful in increasing the adoption figures for Glass, who’s to say how much the firm’s revenue will grow?
Privacy Concerns, Price Serve as the Biggest Roadblocks
It’s hard to say just how big an impact the continuing revelations about governmental spying and the resultant increase in consumer paranoia is having on the popularity of Google Glass. According to market research firm Toluna, 72% of Americans say they won’t buy Google Glass because they don’t want something else that is going to strip them of their digital security and privacy. No matter what business you’re in, if you hear that most of your customers aren’t comfortable with a product, would you start to use it?
“It seems like the trends in our lifetime have moved us towards less security, and the pushy adoption of the needs and agendas of someone else,” explains Marcy Moore, CEO of MorePro Marketing. “This seems to be another example of that.”
Of course, the folks at Mountain View are also contending with economic forces. Once Glass goes into full production, industry insiders estimate that it will be priced around $1,000. For the younger, tech savvy crowd — you know, the people who really pay attention to and buy technology — the price-tag may just be a little too rich for their blood, especially when they can pay $200 for a top-of-the-line smartphone. It’s far too early to tell whether the price-point and the privacy concerns will indeed sink Google’s latest luxury liner, but smart money says it’s going to have some trouble coming out of dry dock.
What do you think about Google Glass? Are privacy and pricing concerns reason enough not to buy?