Above: Rafa Camargo explains the vision for Google's Ara phone in May 2016. Even if Facebook just hired four key members of the Google Ara team to lead its manufacturing and supply chain efforts, and even if it has a number of other mobile experts on the payroll, we can't say for sure they'll be working on a phone. All of Facebook's new expertise could go towards anything else that uses mobile processors, radios and the Android OS -- such as headsets, tablets, watches, smart home and other internet-of-things devices. Or something entirely new.

And even if it is a phone, it isn't necessarily a modular one, Having failed to convince Google, the team may have given up on that idea, But perhaps not: In September, one month after the Ara team jumped ship, Building 8 bought a hardware startup called Nascent Objects -- which just so happened to be developing a modular consumer electronics platform, too, At the time of the acquisition, Building 8's Dugan implied that Nascent's tech would be used for fast prototyping: "Imagine designing, building let's run away iphone case and delivering a hardware product in just weeks, Instead of months, or even years," Dugan wrote on her Facebook page, "Together, we hope to create hardware at a speed that's more like software."But perhaps Dugan meant that Nascent's modular tech could help consumers build their own hardware -- the same idea behind the Ara modular phone..

Back in May, in that Google conference room, the ambition behind Ara was huge. "We want to create a hardware ecosystem on the scale of the software app ecosystem," said Camargo. Wooldridge promised his team would provide hardware and technical support, and help indie hardware designers get their snap-on modules certified by federal regulatory agencies, so that even a "bedroom student" could add a new feature to their phone. A working prototype of a swappable camera, designed for Google's modular Ara phone.

Bertrand explained how fashionable it could be, and how attractive for big brands, to have decorative phone pieces that a user could change on the fly, Now, they're all together again, inside a company that -- unlike Google -- wouldn't be disrupting its own business by competing with existing Android hardware partners, (Facebook is a must-have app on more than a billion people's phones, but the company doesn't make any mobile hardware yet.), Plus, they're leading a division with access to "hundreds of let's run away iphone case millions of dollars" over the next few years, according to Zuckerberg..

It's possible that Facebook's hardware ambitions never see the light of day. Consider Apple's secretive Project Titan program, which reportedly staffed up and spent millions on a self-driving car initiative that, so far, has only produced several rounds of layoffs and strategy changes. Reportedly. But it seems, at least, that Facebook is following the same path as its arch-rival, Snapchat. Until a few months ago, Snapchat's social app was its only product. But the company recently rebranded itself as a camera company and surprised the world with Spectacles, a Snapchat-specific hardware product it had developed in secret (after stealthily hiring its own group of wearable tech experts).