Sale of tech eyewear put on hold indefinitely

Google is ending sales of its Google Glass eyewear, but the company says it is still committed to launching the smart glasses as a consumer product but will stop producing them in its present form.

Rather, it will focus on "future versions of Glass" with work carried out by a different division to before.

The Explorer programme, which gave software developers the chance to buy Glass for $1,500 will close.

The programme was launched in the United States in 2013. It was then opened up to anyone and was launched in the UK last summer. It had been expected that it would be followed reasonably quickly by a full consumer launch.

However, the tech firm will stop taking orders for the product as from next week, and will continue to support companies that are using Glass.

The Glass team will also be moved out of the Google X division which engages in "blue sky" research, and become a separate undertaking, under its current manager, Ivy Ross.

Ross and the Glass team will report to Tony Fadell, the chief executive of the home automation business Nest, acquired by Google a year ago.

He said the project had "broken ground and allowed us to learn what's important to consumers and enterprises alike" and he was excited to be working with the team "to integrate those learnings into future products".

Google says it is committed to working on the future of the product, but gave no timescale for the launch of any new version.