Google may not be afraid to fail but it still can’t be happy that so many are comparing its Glass headset to one of the dorkiest innovations of the past 20 years: The Segway. GigaOM reports that a group of venture capitalists who are investing their cash in wearable computing devices don’t think Glass has what it takes to be a hit on the consumer market. Instead, they believe that it will be seen as the calling card of hapless, socially awkward dorks.
“It’s technology that sits between you and other people… it feels to me that it’s too impersonal,” John Frankel, a partner at ff Venture Capital, told the Wearable Tech Expo this week. “It feels more like the Segway than anything else, which is, ‘hey, this looks great on paper but I probably wouldn’t have one in the garage.’ ”
Intel Capital’s Tammi Smorynski was similarly unimpressed and said that her company has already “been there, done that” with designing wearable computing headsets and found that they aren’t good devices for the mass market, GigaOM notes.
