The Google Glass team announced today, in a post to its Google+ page, that Glass is "graduating from Google[x] labs," presumably still marching toward a "real" consumer launch.

According to the post, January 19th will mark the official end of the Explorer program, a program that has spanned years and seen plenty of awesome, annoying, and controversial moments as Glass has looked for a place in the hearts and minds of tech consumers and its own place in the broader wearable ecosystem, finding homes in operating rooms, fashion runways, fire houses, magazines, music videos, and showers.

As Google iterates on Glass (whether the iterations contain Intel chips or not), the Glass team is becoming its own team at Google outside Google[x]. According to Fortune, the group will report to Tony Fadell moving forward, while still being led by Ivy Ross.

The Glass team doesn't give many additional details, but notes that this is an exciting move for the project, bringing us closer to "future versions of Glass."

Update: In an email going out to explorers, the Glass team notes that new feature development will be ceasing for Explorer Edition while the team works on the next version of Glass. Of course support will still be available for those who need it. Google has also put together a collection of photos and stories from Glass' early days which can be found here.

Source: Google Glass (Google+)