In the New Wireless Universe, You’re Finally at the Center
Project Fi just celebrated its first birthday, but it was conceived more three years ago, on Boxing Day 2012.
At the time, Nick Fox was looking for something new after 10 years working on search ads—the economic engine that drives the entire Google empire. His boss, Susan Wojcicki, suggested he talk to Andy Rubin, who led the creation of Android and still oversaw what had become the world’s most popular mobile operating system. The two of them first spoke on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, and Rubin said he needed someone to tackle an idea bouncing around his head. He wanted to rethink how phones use wireless networks, much as Google had already rethought the mobile OS. “The idea was, ‘How can we drive some innovation in connectivity?'” Fox remembers.
Fox loved the idea, in large part because of the role connectivity, as he calls it, plays in modern life. “It has become like water,” he says. “It has become so essential to what we do.” He and Rubin, who has since left Google, discussed the possibility of making calls over W-iFi networks, but they didn’t have much of a roadmap beyond that. And Fox liked it that way. He believes the best way to drive innovation is to sic a bunch of smart people on a problem and give them the time and resources they need to explore it. With Rubin’s blessing, he did exactly that.
