If you are frothing at the mouth for a pair of Google Glass, you may not have to wait until sometime next year to get your paws on this ultimate eye candy for geeks.
Google may not yet be selling their wearable tech to the masses but this hasn’t stopped many devices from popping up on eBay. There are currently about twelve Google Glass devices available for sale on eBay.com as we speak. Of course, being one of the first to have Glass will cost you double to triple the retail price of $1,500. Those on eBay are priced anywhere from $2,699 to $7,498 USD.
Google doesn’t condone the sale of Glass. In fact, their FAQ specifically states that it is against their terms and services for an Explorer to sell their device. But they recently made a major update to their FAQs which should make a buyer of a used pair of Glass more comfortable.
Last week, Google updated their FAQs stating that they would not disable Explorer devices even if they were sold by the original owner.
“Q: Is it OK for Explorers to try and sell their devices online? Will you disable the devices if they do this?
A: The Explorer program is about taking Glass out in the world and seeing what’s possible with the technology. We hope our Explorers are excited to do just that. While it’s against our terms of service to sell your device, we don’t plan on disabling any Explorer’s device.”
Google’s policy change may be due the growing number of Explorers making it harder to keep track of all of the devices. The original Explorer community started at 10,000 and if we consider the number of invites each Explorer has been given since, this means the community could have potentially quadrupled itself to around 40,000 in total.
Of course buying something on eBay always comes with risk so if you are going to go down this road, caveat emptor. We should add that all of the devices we looked at are not offering shipping outside of the US, sorry fellow Canadians.
But if you are outside the US or can’t bear to pay three months rent on the device, you might not have to wait much longer to get a brand spanking new one of your own. Activity around Google Glass has seemed to pick up steam, suggesting that the market launch of Glass is just around the corner.
The company released a software update last week which redesigned the setup sequence for Glass. And Rochester Optical announced that they will be creating prescription lenses for the second-gen headgear which will be available in 2014. In addition, there have been a number of major marketing events including the mysterious barges which are said to be a Google Glass showrooms and the cast of Hunger Games wearing the device which may be part of Google’s lead up to the big unveil.