Google Glass review: what the public think

We gave Londoners the chance to try Google Glass for the first time: here's what happen

Google Glass is the gadget that every geek’s been talking about for more than two years: to some it’s “a computer on your face” and to others it’s the “wearable” future of modern technology. In San Francisco, people have been attacked simply for wearing this potent political symbol of how technology companies and their rich employees are changing the world.

In London, however, the device is little seen and less understood – while some Google employees are sometimes spotted wearing Glass around their offices, few people realise that its tiny screen can show web search results, translations, directions and the pictures or videos that its tiny camera can take.

Glass faces two challenges: people worry it invades their privacy, often asking if it’s recording all the time, and often think it looks terribly unfashionable. In London’s Green Park, we spoke to tourists and locals about what they thought, however, and many didn’t even balk at the $1,500 price tag currently being charged to the American ‘explorers’ who are happy to pay for the privilege of being Google’s guinea pigs. None even asked if it has facial recognition.

Perhaps most surprisingly, however, some could envisage a future where Glass is as normal as a mobile phone – but as one put it, Google andApple are very good at convincing people to buy things they don’t need