Meta's aggressive push into smart glasses has revived the ghost of Google's biggest hardware flop. On Business Wars, tech journalist Julian Chokkattu recalled the initial hype surrounding the 2012 debut of Google Glass, describing how Sergey Brin famously demoed the device with skydivers. It was initially seen as "what was supposed to be this revolutionary new technology," Chokkattu noted, but the public excitement quickly evaporated.
The device soon became a cultural punchline. Chokkattu pointed out that the product "kind of just fell flat" as "immediately everyone started calling people glassholes," largely because the glasses looked incredibly nerdy. Boone Ashworth agreed on the dorkiness factor, though he observed that Google's newer prototype smart glasses are at least "slightly less dorky than the original Google Glass."
While Google cautiously tests the waters of its return, Meta is charging straight ahead. David Brown explained that Meta has leaned fully into AI branding for its "Gen Two" Ray-Ban smart glasses, unaffected by previous privacy backlashes. Instead of backing down, they are moving upscale with the "Meta Ray-Ban Displays" priced at "eight hundred dollars," betting that consumers are finally ready to embrace the face-worn tech they rejected a decade ago.