The Death of Project Ara

Google just killed its Project Ara. It’s a modular phone initiative. For tech experts, Ara was one of the coolest but strangest things that the company was working on. Unfortunately, the project didn’t pan out. Thanks to the tech’s world of sealed-up Galaxy and iPhone devices.

Despite its cancellation, Ara was an excellent example of Google’s weirdness. Its death is also a hint that the company’s experiment is really in trouble.

Google is weird.

In 2013, Larry Page made a bizarre speech about setting aside a part of this world for things that are illegal or not allowed by regulation.

The birth and death of Ara

The shutdown came after a year of struggle and not knowing the future of the project. Last year, the company canceled its pilot launch in Puerto Rico. After that, no one could say anything about its future.

Three months later, Ara made an appearance at Google I/O. Its staff showed off Ara’s working phones. They said that a developer model would soon be ready at the end of 2016. The team also said that the project’s consumer-ready model would be out on sale in 2017.

However, Google switched course, apparently. The modular phone was visible and potentially beneficial for Google’s ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects) group. But with Ara’s demise, does it mean that ATAP will now be canceled?

Regina Dugan

She was once the head of ATAP, but she left the group to work with Facebook. Dugan worked as a secretive research department in Pentagon. When she arrived at Google, she became a huge advocate of the ATAP group.

When Dugan left, Ara is also dead. Then, it’s reported that some of the company’s experiments are also struggling. Reports also showed that Alphabet’s moonshot X lab struggled to get its products of the experimental phase.

Apart from Ara, Google Fiber is also struggling. It’s the company’s initiative to bring a super fast home Internet to all. But it’s having trouble in launching in several cities, where it promised to deliver the technology.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are concerned about all the costs associated with fiber-optic Internet networks. Reports are going around claiming that Google is leaving fiber. It’ll now use wireless to deliver the Internet when it launches in Los Angeles and Dallas.

Turmoil is expected when you work on wild projects, like Ara. Despite the shutdown of several of its projects, Google is still earning money.