Rumors of Google throwing their card into the hat of cellular service providers caused a lot of brow-raising for many over the past year or so. With a massive company like Google, who has already made impressive strides in various areas of the tech industry already, one could reasonably suspect that Google was planning to “stick it” to carriers. After all, that’s the message that is being conveyed through Google’s Internet service, Google Fiber.

News broke today that Google has indeed decided to contribute to the growing list of alternative cellular providers apart from the “Big Four” in the U.S., and you may or may not be surprised to learn that Google’s “Project Fi”, the official name of their new service, is actually not a carrier killer. Rather, Google manages to band two carriers “together” in one device, aims to create fair pricing for certain data users, and unifies a user’s phone number to work across multiple devices rather than just one.

Here are the highlights of Project Fi:

• A hybrid provider model, which uses both T-Mobile and Sprint networks to give coverage to Project Fi users. Currently, the only device that works on this hybrid network is Google and Motorola’s Nexus 6.
• Unlimited domestic calling and international texting to more than 120 countries for $20/month. Data is then sold separately for $10 per gigabyte ($10 for 1GB, $20 for 2GB, $30 for 3GB, so on and so forth). Pricing seems pretty standard here, but here’s the kicker: For all of the data you don’t use, Google gives it back. The example they use is this: Say you purchase 3GB of data, but you only use 1.4GB that month. Google gives you $16 back. Alternatively, anytime you surpass 500MB of extra data, you’ll be asked to pay that $5 (or more) extra the next month. No crazy fees here for not being able to properly predict how much data you’d use that month.
• Your phone number is attached to the service, but not the phone. You can use your phone number that you get from Project Fi on tablets or computers as well. This way, even if you lose your phone, you’re not necessarily doomed.
• Pay-as-you-go, so no contracts.

As you can see there are a lot of good things about Project Fi, but nothing that makes it seem like it’s leagues above every other option for every single person. The people I see benefiting most from this would be:

• People who use data, but not a lot of it very often. You get your money back for overestimating, so it’s a good service for figuring out what you need and not being penalized for it.
• People who get good service with Sprint, T-Mobile, or both.
• People who switch from smartphones, computers, or tablets often.

The price of the plan is also pretty on point on comparison to other MVNOs, so there’s not too much that’s spectacular about that. A lot of people may opt to go with another carrier based on the fact that they get more for their money ($45 for unlimited talk, text, and data for example) but run the risk of not getting their money’s worth in terms of actual usage, speed (consider throttling), or even service. It really just depends on what is most important to the user in the end.

Google’s Project Fi has interesting new solutions to offer, so it’s not “just another MVNO”. I believe that Project Fi has a lot of people that can benefit from the service, but it’s definitely not any type of carrier killer.