Google to have a fresh look at Glass device

Tony Fadell, the executive that Google put in charge of its Glass wearable device, says there will be "no sacred cows" when the company begins its rethink of the product.

In January, Google suspended sales of the test versions of the device, having previously suggested the high-tech spectacles would go on general sale by the end of 2014.

Mr Fadell, chief executive and founder of Nest Labs, the smart home device maker bought by Google for $3.2 billion in 2014, was appointed to oversee the Glass project.

This unexpected reversal came after the general public turned against Glass, and Google’s ambitious attempt to create a new category in the personal electronics market ran into complaints about privacy.

In his first public comments about Glass since taking the role, Mr Fadell indicated that a big rethink was likely.

“We’ve decided to go and look at every detail, have no sacred cows and figure out the way forward,” he said at the Google Zeitgeist conference near London. “I have a really engaged team, they’re really excited about the future and expect more things to come soon.”

Future

Glass remains a project that operates from the company’s headquarters in Mountain View,

California

, he said, and there were no plans to make it a product under Nest’s brand.

Control over the future of Glass has given Mr Fadell greater responsibility at Google. Larry Page, the internet company's chief executive, had previously planned to allow Mr Fadell to operate independently at Nest, charging him with creating a largely separate business based around creating hardware for the home.

Mr Fadell, a former Apple executive who was a key figure in the development of the iPod, iPhone and iPad, created Nest in 2010, with a vision to establish a suite of premium home devices driven by software. Nest's products include a "learning" thermostat that can be controlled by a smartphone and "smart" smoke alarm that responds to waving gestures.

Asked if Nest had retained its independence following the acquisition by Google, he said: “We have our own offices, we have our brand, we have our own policies and our own management team. We have all the things we want to have as independent, but where there are operational synergies, we’re allowed to pick and choose.”

Mr Fadell said these include access to Google’s finance, legal and human resources teams. At the time of the acquisition, analysts said Nest would provide Google with access to the “Apple genome” – an alternative approach to envisaging and marketing new concepts.

Mr Fadell said Google staff were taking advantage of the experience of people at Nest, which employs dozens of former Apple employees.

“People would like to learn from us inside of Google and ask us a lot of questions,” he said. “They come over and there’s a lot of collaboration between the teams in terms of new processes, techniques, ways of looking at marketplaces and figuring out what’s the product fit.”

Google is known for its data-driven approach, researching its users to determine the best way to build its products. But Mr Fadell said Nest would blaze its own trail within the company and not be over-reliant on user research.

He subscribed to the view of Steve Jobs, Apple's late cofounder, who said "people don't know what they want until you show it to them".

Data

“You don’t want an absence of data,” Mr Fadell said. “But what you don’t want to do is go and ask the customer, ‘what do you want?’, or throw them something they’ve seen before and ask them for data on that.”

He insists on signing off on almost every small detail of a Nest product, from its packaging to each component within a device. “Anything that’s a consumer touch point, it needs to go through me for approval,” he said.

Now, with dominion over Glass, Mr Fadell is at the helm of a contest over the future of wearable computing – pitting him against former colleagues at Apple which released its Watch device in April.

He said he had ordered one of the digital timepieces but it has yet to arrive. “I’m going to see how it fits into my life and give it a try.”

(c) 2015 The Financial Times Ltd