Even though Google Glass is out in the wild and on the heads of around 10,000 people, there are still plenty of questions about it. For a long time now, we’ve heard that Glass would retail for $299. And earlier this week, unofficial Glass evangelist Robert Scoble put a bit more oil on the fire when he wrote on Google+ that Best Buy would rent out 6,000 square feet inside each one of its stores to Google to showcase Glass.
All of that sounds great — even though 6,000 square feet sounds like quite a lot — but Google’s Chris Dale, who runs comms for Google Glass, today put those rumors to an end. In a tweet, he noted that Glass isn’t coming to Best Buy in 2014, and that it won’t cost $299. We have verified with Dale that this is, indeed, his tweet and account. It wasn’t hacked.
So there you have it. Obviously, this could mean that Glass will cost $298 or $599, but it’s definitely not coming to Best Buy anytime soon. For now, it’s pretty clear that Google wants to control the Glass sales experience from top to bottom. The company has rented out space in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles for people to pick up their Glass. It’s not clear if it will continue to rent these spaces once it starts selling Glass, but there is no reason to believe that it won’t.
Best Buy already features dedicated store-within-a-store areas for selling Apple products and recently added Microsoft mini-stores, too. Google’s Chromebooks also get some shelf space in most stores.
Update: Best Buy spokesman Jon Sandler just sent us the following statement: “At this point, we do not have plans to announce more collaborations. However, as our CEO Hubert Joly said during earnings this week, if a partnership makes sense for our customers, the vendor and Best Buy, we would be open to considering expansion.”
As for the price, there is really no way of knowing how much Google will charge. I’d actually be surprised if Google knew. The $299 price tag always felt a bit low, given that the developer version is going for $1,499 now. But if Google kept the same hardware, it could even go for as little as $199 next year, or the company could decide to go much higher. It’s very unlikely we’ll find out before the end of the year, but that won’t keep us from trying to find out. For now, the $299 rumor can be put to rest, though.
Image credit: Robert Scoble on Google+