• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, February 22, 2012

Gimmick or game changer, Google appears to be moving full speed ahead with the release of heads-up display glasses.

“People who constantly reach into a pocket to check a smartphone for bits of information will soon have another option: a pair of Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time,” reports The New York Times.

As sources tell NYT, the glasses will go on sale to the public by the end of the year, and cost “around the price of current smartphones.”

As CNet recalls, rumors that the HUD Google Glasses were in the works have been brewing for the past couple of months. “After accounts that Google was finishing up the prototype in December, tech news site 9to5Google reported that a tipster actually saw the glasses.”

Suggests The Next Web: “Such a concept would allow you to check into a location -- as you can now do on Latitude’s iPhone app and now on Google+ -- using the glasses, while services like Google Maps search would show locations that are around the wearer in real time.”

“Privacy, however, is believed to be a concern for Google, as the company is looking to provide a way for others to know if they are being recorded by a user wearing the glasses,” writes AppleInsider.“I could imagine scenarios where the goggles become a huge hit (with mostly males) and a necessary piece of ‘Geek Chic,’” writes Greg Sterling in Search Engine Land. “But I can equally imagine that they’d be ridiculed and satirized in an ‘SNL’ skit.”

Adds The Verge: “Whether these will take off depends on a wide variety of factors: usability, style, and fleshing out exactly what such a product does -- but naturally, we're as excited as anyone to try them. More on this as it develops.”