谷歌暂停销售谷歌眼镜

Google has suspended sales of the test version of its smartglasses and reshuffled the group behind the project to put it under different management.

谷歌暂停了测试版智能眼镜的销售，并重组了该项目的幕后团队，将其置于不同机构的管理之下。

The action follows a troubled trial period during which the device, called Google Glass, has been widely criticised as a threat to privacy, with many early advocates in the tech world giving up wearing the product.

此前，谷歌曾身陷一场十分麻烦的官司。在那段时期内，被称为谷歌眼镜(Google Glass)这款设备被广泛批评为对隐私权的一大威胁。在科技界，许多该产品最初的倡导者都已不再佩戴这款产品。

One person familiar with Google’s decision said, however, that the company was not backing away from the troubled project, but was pushing ahead with a second version.

不过，一位此决定的知情人士称，谷歌并未退出这一陷入麻烦的项目，而是正在努力推出新的版本。

“Going back to the drawing board is the right thing to do” because few owners still wear them, but it is “too premature” to declare Glass a failure, said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Kantar Worldpanel. Glass was an ambitious early attempt at wearable technology, which “consumers still do not fully understand and are unwilling, for the most part, to spend a lot of money on,” she added.

凯度消费者指数(Kantar Worldpanel)分析师卡罗琳娜•米拉内西(Carolina Milanesi)表示，由于很少还有买主仍在佩戴这款眼镜，“将它回炉重新设计是十分正确的选择”。不过，现在宣称谷歌眼镜失败还“为时尚早”。她补充说，谷歌眼镜是对可穿戴技术一次十分大胆的早期尝试，“消费者仍未完全理解这款产品，最主要的是，他们不愿花费太多资金在该产品上”。

The first version had been limited to a so-called “Explorer edition” that was intended as a trial and had achieved its goal of helping the company understand the technology better, the person close to Google said. However, the company had said at one stage that it planned to put the product on general sale before the end of last year.

与谷歌关系密切的人士表示，第一版谷歌眼镜仅限于所谓“探索者版本”，它的用意就是用于测试，并已实现了帮助谷歌提高对可穿戴技术认识的目标。不过，谷歌一度表示，计划在2014年年底前大范围销售该款产品。

Glass is a product of Google’s X laboratory, which was set up under co-founder Sergey Brin to make big bets on projects such as driverless cars. None of these has yet resulted in new products for Google, despite attracting great interest with their technology breakthroughs.

谷歌眼镜是谷歌旗下X实验室的产品。该实验室由谷歌共同创始人谢尔盖•布林(Sergey Brin)设立，其目的是用于豪赌无人驾驶汽车等项目。不过，尽管这些项目在技术上的突破引起了人们的极大兴趣，它们还没有为谷歌的产品线添加新成员。

The Glass project will be taken out of the X lab and put under the control of Tony Fadell, a former Apple executive who runs Google’s Nest smarthome division.

谷歌将把谷歌眼镜项目从X实验室分离出来，置于托尼•法代尔(Tony Fadell)管控之下。法代尔曾是苹果公司(Apple)的主管，目前管理着谷歌旗下的Nest智能家居部门。

Putting Mr Fadell in charge suggested that Google would do more work on design while also looking for ways to make Glass more useful by integrating the technology with other connected home and car products, said Ms Milanesi.

米拉内西表示，让法代尔负责该项目，意味着谷歌会在开展更多设计工作的同时，通过将该技术与其他物联网家庭和汽车产品的整合，想办法让谷歌眼镜变得更加有用。

The decision marks a significant expansion of Mr Fadell’s responsibilities and throws him into a head-to-head contest with his former colleagues at Apple, whose Watch device, expected to go on sale soon, is the tech world’s other most closely followed experiment in the area.

这一决定标志着法代尔背负的责任大大增加，并让他陷入与苹果前同事针锋相对的竞争之中。目前，苹果公司旗下的苹果手表(Apple Watch)设备预计很快就会上架销售。该产品是科技界另一款受到最密切关注的可穿戴领域试验产品。

It also represents a change in direction from the strategy that Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, had laid out. His earlier plan had been to give Mr Fadell considerable autonomy inside the company to build a big business around home automation, rather than giving him responsibility for other hardware initiatives.

此外，该决定还意味着，对于其首席执行官拉里•佩奇(Larry Page)所做的战略布局，谷歌正在加以调整。此前，佩奇的计划并不是让法代尔负责其他硬件项目，而是在公司内部赋予他极大自治权，以便围绕家庭自动化打造规模庞大的业务。

Google also hinted at shifting the focus of Glass more towards business rather than consumer use. Much of the early interest from software developers has involved writing applications for workers who need access to information while their hands are busy with other things.

此外，谷歌还暗示会把谷歌眼镜的注意力更多地转向商用而非家用。对于软件开发商来说，他们最初的兴趣主要放在了为某些员工编写应用程序上。这些员工需要在双手被占用时访问各种信息。

“Glass at Work has been growing and we’re seeing incredible developments with Glass in the workplace,” the company said in a statement announcing the change.

谷歌在宣布这一调整的声明中表示：“职场版谷歌眼镜一直在增长。我们发现，谷歌眼镜在职场的发展令人难以置信。”