Tits and Glass: Porn Comes To Google Glass, Google Freaks

The world’s first and largest Android adult app store wasted no time tapping into the Glass market. This week, Mikandi, as they’re called, released Tits and Glass, an app that encourages Glass users to take advantage of their ability to generate POV content, by enabling them to upload racy pictures into a stream for other users to rate — think Instagram, minus the filter-focus, all adult themed.

Sounds like a winning proposition? We sure thought so, but Google vociferously disagreed. In a panic to separate itself from anything adult, Google quietly updated its policy to state:

We don’t allow Glassware content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material. Google has a zero-tolerance policy against child pornography. If we become aware of content with child pornography, we will report it to the appropriate authorities and delete the Google Accounts of those involved with the distribution.

They then used the update to ban Tits and Glass.

In a statement on the Mikandi blog, cofounder Jesse Adams elaborated on Google’s lack of transparency on the policy change:

When we received our Glass and started developing our app 2 weeks ago, we went through the policy very carefully to make sure we were developing the app within the terms. We double checked again last week when making the site live on the Internet and available for install for testing during last week’s announcement.

We were not notified of any changes and still haven’t been notified by Google. We also double checked our emails to see if any notifications of policy changes were announced, but we haven’t found any such emails.

Although the app is still live and people are using it, at this point we must make changes to the app in order to comply with the new policies.

Another update a day later revealed an even more ham-fisted response from Google:

We’ve been coding away and revised the app to meet Google’s new policies. While testing the updated the app, our developer discovered that Google dropped the API limit to 0 on his Glass user account. In non-nerd speak, that means we can’t push any updates to the app.

He called Google this afternoon to find out if we were officially blocked. Google representatives refused to answer any questions as to whether or not the API account was blocked. At the moment, however, our API limit remains stubbornly at zero.

So here’s where we are: we’ve kept true to our promise to adhere to Google’s Glass policies (as we always scrupulously comply with all of our legal obligations) and have updated our app to reflect that. We’re eagerly waiting to hear back from Google in regards to the status of our account. As soon as we know, you’ll know.

Google, you’re starting to become indistinguishable from Apple. We’re disappoint.

UPDATE: On June 27, Mikandi announced a compromise that would enable Tits and Glass to be used with Google Glass:

Google’s latest revision to its Glass Platform Developer Policy spoils the fun by prohibiting “Glassware content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material.” Therefore, the biggest change to the Tits & Glass adult app is that Glass users are no longer allowed to share intimate racy experiences with other Glass users.

We’ve added a feature to filter out pornographic material from appearing on the Glass app. But fret not. Although you can’t share your nude photos on the device itself, you can still share your sexy POV content on titsandglass.com.

And because we don’t want you to get totally bored with your now-kinda-boring device, we partnered with top photographers around the globe to preload the app with irresistibly hot, non-pornographic photos of some of the world’s most beautiful models. You can access, vote, and comment on these photos through Glass.

The Mikandi team adds: “The change in our app only affects the roughly 2,000 developers outside of Google who have Google Glass. We’re optimistic that once Glass is available to consumers, Google will open the device to allow third party Glassware that are not subject to the same adult content restrictions. If and when that day comes, we will happily update our app so adult Glass users can get the sexy content they want.”