The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of the world’s most revolutionary phone | VentureBeat (Jan 10, 2017)

This piece is probably hundreds of words more than you want to read on Google’s failed Project Ara modular phone, but there’s some interesting history here nonetheless, and it also fits into at least two narratives: Hardware is Hard, and Alphabet Lacks Focus. This is just the kind of project that almost everyone who had any sense outside of Google (and presumably many inside it too) knew would never work – the kind of “great in theory, lousy in practice” thinking that Google often falls into. Smartphones are tough enough without massively handicapping many of the things people care about most with a modular approach. Google did eventually kill this project in the Ruth Porat era of austerity, but it should arguably never have made it past the YouTube video the story starts with.

via The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of the world’s most revolutionary phone | VentureBeat

The company, topic, and narrative tags below will take you to other posts with the same tags. The narrative link(s) will also take you to the narrative essay which provides additional context behind the post.

• Alphabet
• Google

• Focus
• Hardware
• Modular
• Smartphones

• Alphabet Lacks Focus
• Google's Hardware Push
• Hardware is Hard

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