Google Gets Strict With How Developers Can Refer To Glass

Glass developers, if you thought Google was impeding on your creativity (and entertainment) by banning porn apps, including the wonderfully named Tits & Glass, the Mountain View, Calif. company updated its branding guidelines Wednesday dictating how you can refer to the wearable computer, brand your app, tag your content, and more.

Reading like a style guide, it's apparent Google is very particular about how and where the term "Glass" shows up in text. For starters, it's just Glass—never plural (bad: Google Glasses) or possessive. Promotional materials should always carry a trademark symbol following Glass in the first or most prominent reference.

Other guidelines include:

Communications should always include the attribution: "Glass is a trademark of Google Inc."

Glass should not be part of the name of a business or product, and developers are instructed to use "for Glass" instead. For example, your app can be named Cat Facts for Glass, but not Glass Cat Facts.

If Glass is used as a descriptor, it can only be followed by a generic term, such as "Glass features."

When sharing content, tag content so recipients know it was created with Glass. Suggested tags include #throughglass for easy aggregation and discoverability and "Sent through Glass" for emails and other types of communication.

It's logical that Google would want to maintain control over its platform, but such adherence is hard to police and ultimately up to the developers themselves. Apple has many guidelines of its own to encourage developers to conform to its standards. After the iPhone launch in the fall, for example, the company told developers they couldn't feature the gold iPhone 5S in promotional images.