Today during Google Venture’s “Glass Collective” event, Google told us that it hopes to get the Glass hardware into the hands of developers “within the next month.” The exact date for when Google plans to ship the first publicly available versions of Glass remains unknown, but Google has now confirmed to us that it is now very close to shipping the $1,500 devices to developers.
Shipping Glass within the next month, of course, makes sense, given that Google will host its annual I/O developer conference in San Francisco from May 15 to 17. Glass will surely take center stage at this event, and if Google wants to get developers excited about the project and talk about (and launch) Glass’ Mirror API during I/O, it needs to get the hardware into the hands of developers soon.
Last year, Google allowed I/O attendees to pre-register for Glass, but the company never really reached out to these developers since — except for sending them glass blocks with their wait-list number engraved on it.
Google also recently allowed others to compete for the right to be among the first to buy Glass by posting their reasons for wanting Glass on Twitter and Google+. That project, which was going to bring about 8,000 additional early testers into the Glass community, was heavily criticized because it seemed Google (and the company it partnered with for this) just picked people randomly. Google later rescinded some of these invitations.
Users who won the right to buy Glass have to pick it up in person in L.A., San Francisco or New York. It’s not clear if developers will have to do the same, but it would make sense for Google to allow developers to pick their kits up at I/O.