After making the major disclosure in the month of March, Google has announced that the Google Glass units are about to ship and now it is only a matter of time for the device to arrive. The company has also released developer guidelines and documentation for the Glass Mirror API and a bunch of example code.
With the release of documentation came one crucial policy announcement from the part of Google stating that Google does not want any advertisement on its unique Glass eyewear. In the policy published, it has been mentioned clearly that the developers working on the API may not include advertisements to it, and the app developers may not charge the users additionally for downloading the applications for the device. That means the third party developers will not have a direct way to make money from their apps.
The policy makes it clear that the web giant is taking small steps in respect of allowing access to the third party developers. In this context, it should be noted that access to the API is still in limited preview and it is only the developers with the Glass hardware who can work actually with the API and for the rest, development of Apps can be done based on the documentation, but the actual testing is not possible for the time being. Features like the voice input or real-time image recognition are also not available with the developers.
The approach of Google towards its latest head mounted Google Glass display device is seemingly different from the other popular platforms such as Apple, BlackBerry, Microsoft or Android that has encouraged native codes to make it more flexible and fast. According to the API documentation the functionality of the device, for now, will be dependent on third party servers, and the device will communicate with the servers through encrypted links, this will reduce the chance of crashes and malware.
No official answer was given by the Google about allowing advertising or about making a Glassware store. According to Babak Parviz, the leader of the project, the company has no plans about advertising on the device for now. But with time we can expect to see Google or other third party developers to incorporate ads with the device.
Also, Google Glass’s specs have been announced.