Google's Wireless Head Departs To Launch Venture FundGoogle's Wireless Head Departs To Launch Venture Fund

The "head of special initiatives" at Google, Chris Sacca, is leaving the company a little more than a month before the major FCC auction of primo wireless spectrum.

Sacca is leaving Google to raise a venture fund to invest in early-stage tech startups, he said in an interview with information.

"I've been at Google for four years, and I'm now vested in my main stock grant," said Sacca, who will leave the company at the end of the year. "More importantly, we've reached an inflection point for our wireless activities and there's a strong team in place to move them forward."

While Sacca wasn't the official head of Google's wireless division, he has served as the public face for many of the company's wireless initiatives. He headed up Google's ill-fated partnership with EarthLink in the planned free Wi-Fi network for San Francisco, a project that has been stalled by City Hall politics and by questions about the economics of the business model. He also has publicly promoted Google's effort to bring more openness to the wireless industry by lobbying the FCC to alter the rules for the upcoming auction of valuable spectrum in the 700-MHz band. The FCC adopted a set of guidelines for the auction that require winning bidders on certain portions of the spectrum to open the resulting networks to applications and devices from outside providers.

In a post on the Google Blog late last month, Sacca wrote, "Consumers deserve more choices and more competition than they have in the wireless world today. And at a time when so many Americans don't have access to the Internet, this auction provides an unprecedented opportunity to bring the riches of the Net to more people."

"I was reflecting on the past year," he said, "and what's transpired [in] terms of the openness of the wireless industry has exceeded my most optimistic expectations."

Sacca's tenure hasn't been without its critics. The tech-industry gossip site Valleywag has been especially harsh in its Sacca coverage, calling him a "blunderkind" and a "blustery big thinker" whose main role was to appear at conferences and deliver high-concept talks. "I don't know what their deal is," said Sacca, shrugging off the epithets.

Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt recently confirmed that the search company will participate in the 700-MHz auction, currently scheduled for Jan. 24. Most observers doubt that Google will actually build and operate a wireless network -- an assumption that its unsatisfying experience as co-developer of the promised San Francisco network would seem to bolster.

According to its corporate job-listing site, Google is seeking a "Director of Other" who will head up the company's efforts in "new and unrelated businesses" -- a job description that sounds similar to Sacca's. The company apparently has no plans to replace Sacca himself.

Google's wireless initiatives are headed by a four-person team that includes Phil Gossett, from the company's engineering division, and senior counsel Richard Witt, in Washington, D.C.

Before coming to Google, Sacca was an executive at Speedera Networks (later acquired by Akamai Technologies), and prior to that was an attorney with the Silicon Valley law firm of Fenwick & West.