Google Glass sales halted amid reshuffle

Google has suspended sales of its controversial smartglasses and reshuffled the group behind the project to put it under different management.

The action follows a troubled test period during which the device, called Google Glass, has been widely criticised as a threat to privacy, with even many early advocates giving up wearing the product.

One person familiar with Google’s decision said the company was not backing away from the troubled project, but was pushing ahead with a second version of Glass. The first version had been limited to an “Explorer edition” intended as a trial and had achieved its goal of helping Google understand the technology better, this person said.

Glass is a product of Google’s X laboratory, which was set up under co-founder Sergey Brin to make big bets on projects like driverless cars. None of these has yet resulted in new products for Google, however, despite attracting huge interest with its technology breakthroughs.

The Glass project will be taken out of the X lab and put under the control of Tony Fadell, a former Apple executive who currently runs Google's Nest smarthome division.

By taking over Google’s most high-profile “wearables” initiative, Mr Fadell has now been thrown into a head-to-head contest with his former colleagues at Apple, whose Watch device, expected to go on sale soon, is the tech world’s other most closely watched experiment in the area. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2015