Project Ara was a modular smartphone project under development by Google. Launched October 29, 2013; shut down September 2, 2016 — it lived 2 years. One of 21 Google products killed in 2016. Project Ara was a modular smartphone project under development by Google. The project was originally headed by the Advanced Technology and Projects team within Motorola Mobility while it was a Google subsidiary. Google retained the ATAP group when selling Motorola Mobility to Lenovo, and it was placed under the stewardship of the Android development staff; Ara was later split off as an independent operation. Google stated that Project Ara was being designed to be utilized by "6 billion people": 1 billion current smartphone users, and 5 billion feature phone users. Wiki link Data: Killed by Google (killedbygoogle.com, MIT).