Google lives up to their motto and will do no evil and thus will reject Google Glass apps with facial recognition until privacy protection is in place. Excellent. I know several people in law enforcement and related professions who seriously do not want to be id’ed by strangers at Starbucks. Ditto for celebrities and their children.
However, could apps on a rooted Glass ignore those rules? Hmmm.
From Project Glass, the official G+ site for Glass
We’ve been listening closely to you, and many have expressed both interest and concern around the possibilities of facial recognition in Glass. As Google has said for several years, we won’t add facial recognition features to our products without having strong privacy protections in place. With that in mind, we won’t be approving any facial recognition Glassware at this time.
We’ve learned a lot from you in just a few weeks and we’ll continue to learn more as we update the software and evolve our policies in the weeks and months ahead.
Mega-Glass booster Robert Scoble says great, Glass doesn’t need facial recognition anyway.
By now you’ve heard the news that Google Glass is forbidding face recognition apps. (I’ve put several articles about that onto my Glassholes magazine on Flipboard at flip.it/ZoHRp — you’ll need either Android or iOS to read that magazine for now, web coming later this year ).
I actually think that’s a good thing.
Why? We don’t need it.
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and am one of the world’s best networkers.
It’s not face recognition we need. We just need better tools to learn about each other when it’s appropriate.
Where is it appropriate?
Read on to learn where.