Google could dominate wearables with Glass OS

Did you know that Google Glass still exists?

Yes, the gadget that launched a thousand think pieces hasn't disappeared, though the absence of hand-wringing about, say, Glass' privacy implications suggests a worse fate than bad publicity. No one is going to worry about a product if no one is wearing it.

To be fair, we the media are still paying a certain kind of attention to Glass, much as The National Enquirer pays attention to aging celebrities who may not be long for this world. A recent Reuters piece catalogues the many ways developers are defecting from Glass. To which we say: stick a fork in Glass already, google It's done.

At least Glass appears to be done as a mass-market gadget for consumers. Yes, Glass is still in beta, which means Glass partisans could argue consumers haven't had a chance to embrace it. But if the pent-up consumer demand was really there, why isn't Google rushing to meet it?
The reality is that Google isn't a hardware company. Its misadventure with Motorola shows that making and selling physical stuff just doesn't align with how Google makes money. What Google does know is software. Android is the world's leading mobile operating system not because Google makes a great phone that everyone uses, but because the company let other phone makers use it. And Google could do the same with the wearable operating system it's developed for Glass.
"Why not license it out and get out of the hardware business altogether?" asks J.P. Gownder, who covers the wearable device market for Forrester Research.