Google Glasses sound amazing…kinda wish someone else was making them instead

I think its important that I start this post by emphasizing that a) I love new technology and b) I love Google.

Let’s start with the first point. If you know me, or know this blog, you know I love new tech and innovation.  So when I see the new Google Glasses videos and articles coming out, I get all geeked up. How can you not love the idea of these?

So needless to say, I think these things are great. Whether I’d wear them or not isn’t the point. The idea itself is fantastic.

As for the second point, I’m a huge Google user. I use their search exclusively. I use Gmail. I use Google Docs. I use Google Voice. I love all of these products.

So why do I wish someone else was making these glasses?

Google has a problem rolling out new services. They’ve failed, a lot. And while I talk on this blog about the need to fail in order to succeed, this is a different kind of failure. Startups need to fail often and quickly so they can get their product off the ground. What Google fails to do is give their products the necessary attention after they have launched.

See, Google makes 97% of its revenue from advertising (depending on the source – here’s one from Wired). And over 50% of that revenue is from search.

Bottom line: Google is kind of amazing at search. And its clearly the bread winner of the family.

This is why Google has a hard time rolling out new products successfully. They are far too over-indexed in one service area.

For example, even though Sergey can be seen here supposedly wearing the Google Glasses out in public, when he gets the smallest amount of pressure from his shareholders on revenue, I can assure you he’s going to hand those glasses back to an engineer and spend the rest of his time grinding on his search business to see where the problems are occurring and how to stop them.

Sergey looking super cool in his new Google Glasses (supposedly)

And you can’t hardly blame him.

Case in point: Facebook buys Instagram for a billion dollars.

Second case in point: Facebook closes down Places because they can’t beat Foursquare.

Both of those are examples of a company that is so focused on their core product that they can’t innovate in seemingly simple extensions of their business. You mean to tell me if Zuckerberg spent three months focused on how to compete with Instagram he couldn’t do it? Of course he could. But he has bigger fish to fry and therefore, like his friends at Google, he can’t innovate fast enough any more in new areas.

So while I’m excited about Google Glasses, I kinda hope some other players start jumping into the space because I’d expect we get another half-focus from Google on this one and we’ll end up with another Google Wave instead of another Gmail.