Project Fuchsia: Google Is Quietly Working on a Successor to Android

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-19/google-team-is-said-to-plot-android-successor-draw-skepticism

by uptown • 8 years ago

180 208 8 years ago

bloomberg.com

simosx• 8 years ago

This Bloomberg article has several shortcomings.

1. "Android and Chrome OS are built on Linux, a widely used open-source programming language."

Here they mix up the Linux kernel with the Java programming language.

2. "Moving from Linux, though, could have upsides for Google. Android’s use of the technology, which is owned by Oracle Corp., is at the center of a lengthy, bitter lawsuit between the two companies. Shifting away from using Linux would help Google’s legal case that its software isn’t reliant on Oracle."

While here they mix up the Java programming language with the Linux kernel.

gizmo385• 8 years ago

Imagine the horrors if Oracle "owned" Linux...

devmunchies• 8 years ago

Then I’m sure Unix or FreeBSD would be more prevalent for servers.

pjmlp5• 8 years ago

Well, they did their share of contributions

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/linux/techn...

As for Java, if Google actually cared to get away with their actions, they could have bought Sun.

Surely it would have been cheaper than what they already paied their lawyers.

zhengyi13• 8 years ago

Well, SCO certainly tried to make that claim.

deaddodo• 8 years ago

Well, they did build JavaOS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaOS

yemich• 8 years ago

1. No they didn't. They incorrectly used the word language instead of Kernel. Chrome Os is not built with Java.

2. Correct

geocar• 8 years ago

Here they mix up the Linux kernel with the Java programming language.

I parsed that comma as an "and".

While here they mix up the Java programming language with the Linux kernel.

Did they? It might be implied that Google is dropping Java as well. Indeed other sources seem to suggest this is their strategy[1], [2], [3], [4]

My experiences with Bloomberg writers is that they're not lazy, but they elide a great deal of specificity to focus on the business effects and brands instead of technical bits and bobs.

[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/21/android_the_next_10...

[2] https://www.quora.com/Is-Google-implictly-going-to-drop-Java...

[3] https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/google-reveals-more-fuc...

[4] https://www.androidauthority.com/we-compiled-fuchsia-os-7104...

basch• 8 years ago

I agree. Some other snippets

In the code pages, the Googlers working on Fuchsia specify that the software is not finalized.

Really, that needed to be said? An operating system with no practical use or implementation isnt finished? None of the ones in mass use right now are "finished."

This means Google’s latest services only reach a fraction of Android users.

Google Play Services were split out from the OS back in 2013. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-s... The author repeatedly tries to paint Android as a monolith held back by hardware manufacturers, and google, for the most part has split what we know as Android into two layers, and has fullll control of one of those two.

"Moving from Linux, though, could have upsides for Google. Android’s use of the technology, which is distributed by Oracle Corp., is at the center of a lengthy, bitter lawsuit between the two companies. Android was also built using Java software technology, which Oracle owns and has claimed Google stole to shore up its mobile business."

Even after a correction, the article still claims Oracle has sued Google over Linux! (Not sure if your copy/paste is from after the correction.) The author demonstrates no understanding of the difference between the Linux Kernel, Common Libraries, Android Runtime, Android Application Framework, and Google Services. Moving from Linux doesnt mean replacing the Runtime or Services. Completely separate layers. Oracles disupte is over the Runtime not Linux.

tootie2• 8 years ago

That first mistake isn't in the article anymore, but the second is.

caycep• 8 years ago

This has been percolating along for a few years, no? I remember hearing vague announcements about a Fuchsia project for a while.

notatoad3• 8 years ago

I don't think there's been much in the way of announcements, but yes, this has been in progress for a few years. It's being developed in the open, with a public github repo.

Matthias247• 8 years ago

The source code in the open is one thing. However there are not a lot of design documents or discussions visible for the public. Therefore it's hard to follow the development and really getting an idea where the project is heading.

eej71• 8 years ago

Is it fair to describe this as a rewrite from scratch kind of project?

notatoad3• 8 years ago

no. it's not a rewrite of android, or (at this point) android-compatible in any way.

it's a brand new operating system that google is experimenting with.

gmueckl• 8 years ago

It will need some form of compatibility to get a foothold in the market, though.

wpdev_63• 8 years ago

I am really surprised Microsoft isn't doing something like this. They are losing the OS war.

s73v3r_• 8 years ago

They've already tried. There's no interest currently for a 3rd also-ran OS, especially from a vendor that would be changing up the toolkit yet again.

Splognosticus• 8 years ago

They're on like their fourth attempt, aren't they? They tried Pen Windows, then Windows CE and its derivatives, then there was the ARM version of Windows 8, and now they're hoping Intel tablets running Windows 10 can become a thing.

karmakaze2• 8 years ago

If Fushia/Flutter gets adopted, it would be a better outcome than MS botched effort with universal desktop/mobile apps. The fragmented tooling and support was like it was made by sales/marketing types rather than engineers.

karmakaze2• 8 years ago

Has anyone here had a good experience making a single UWP app for both mobile and desktop?

cptskippy• 8 years ago

They're taking a different approach. They're positioning .NET to be the Platform regardless of the underlying Hardware/OS.

pjmlp5• 8 years ago

Not really, they are winning the desktop and tablets (2-1) war.

Desktops aren't going away, and Macs are pretty much an US phenomenon, alongside a couple of other countries.

Likewise, Android tablets aren't that good, with most of the apps being phone apps. Google now is playing with ChromeOS for tablets, which also remains to be seen where it goes.

So, most consumer shops around here are now mostly selling iPads and Windows 10 tablets.

bitmapbrother8• 8 years ago

Not really, they are winning the desktop and tablets (2-1) war.

According to tablet market share stats they are clearly not winning that war and not even a serious competitor.

Likewise, Android tablets aren't that good, with most of the apps being phone apps.

Most of the Android apps I use on tablets all resize fine to use the extra space. I consider trying to use desktop apps that are not optimized for a touch interface a much worse experience.

muricula• 8 years ago

They tried to rewrite the OS in a C# derivative and could never meet the perf needed while still fighting backwards compatibility issues[0]. At this point mobile OS's are a lost cause, but the PC market is stable. Windows server has never been as big as Linux, but all of Azure runs the Windows hypervisor. I'm not sure they're losing at all actually. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system)

mr_toad• 8 years ago

Hyper V is a type 1 hypervisor. It’s not a Windows hypervisor in any sense except that the license is bundled with Windows.

coding123• 8 years ago

I would have agreed with you a year or so ago. I've been on MBP for about 4 years, my next laptop is going to be a PC again.

thinkingemote2• 8 years ago

Linux and Windows runs on personal computers

013a• 8 years ago

They are. The fact that HN doesn't follow it just speaks to the anti-Microsoft bias here. They've had the OneCore project back in 2015-2016 to unify the kernel and core OS pieces, which was a success and is now powering every Windows device out there from Xbox to the PC. They have the UWP, their unified app framework.

They are also working on CShell, which is a unified UI/windowing/compositing system that will work across PC, Xbox, Mobile, etc.

CShell + OneCore + UWP are essentially becoming part of a "brand new" OS they're calling Core OS, which will strip the Win32 backward compatibility requirements and just work with UWP apps, primarily targeted at devices like phones and low power tablets.

You can search Project Polaris for more information

JTbane• 8 years ago

UWP is dead in the water.

losvedir• 8 years ago

I wrote a small Flutter app recently and rather enjoyed the experience. I'm reluctant to spend more time on the technology, though, since it seems like it has a high chance of dying out. But as I understand it, Fuchsia would have native apps written using Flutter as well, which would be great, so I really hope it does take off.

myth_drannon• 8 years ago

Why do you think it has a high chance of dying?

jonny_eh• 8 years ago

It's based on Dart, a language that already failed to take off in browsers? Just a guess.

ucaetano• 8 years ago

Quietly? The entire development has been public, hasn't it?

hughes• 8 years ago

Something can be both quiet and public.

kbumsik2• 8 years ago

"Switching away from Android could provide Google the opportunity to hit the reset button on any mistakes they believe they made a decade ago,". "They might be able to regain some power that they’ve ceded to device manufacturers and telecom carriers."

How making a new OS achive this? What kind of problems Fuchsia could solve when Linux can’t solve?

I personally hope Fuchsia would remain as an experimental project. A new non-GPL OS by a big player like Google is a bad news for hardware dev and enthusiasts from XDA. This will make hardware driver developments more fragmented and closed-source.

Smartphone manufacturers are trying to hide their kernel and device drivers, even they are using Linux. Imagine there are no legal restrictions to hide those.

kyrra• 8 years ago

One of Android's major headaches is that Linux does not have a stable driver interface. Interfaces within linux change regularly, but only drivers that are checked into the main tree are updated. If you maintain a driver outside of that tree, you will experience pain. That's how Android operated and why it's linux kernel rarely changed (and why doing OS updates for phones was so hard).

Android has been trying to fix this with treble[0], which will make many more phones get OS updates going forward. So Android has attempted to work around one of linux major problems.

Another large problem is that Linux was designed for desktop architectures. It's design and focus continues to go that way. This has impact across an entire range of functionality that an OS is supposed to bring.

Fuschia seems to be a research project with a focus on mobile/laptop type devices. It could care less about server type environments, which lets it make different tradeoffs in design.

[0] https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/

endorphone• 8 years ago

"That's how Android operated and why it's linux kernel rarely changed "

Android changed Linux kernels with every single release, from 2.6.27 to 4.10 by core release, and vendors often update kernels incrementally in between. Any driver issues are trivial to change presuming they didn't come in a binary blob and the source refused any further changes, which is supposedly the case with Qualcomm hardware in the Nexus 6, for instance.

"Android has been trying to fix this with treble[0]"

Treble is about the intra-Android interfaces, not Linux device interfaces. This is about Google doing large scale, breaking changes that made vendors just throw up their hands.

"Another large problem is that Linux was designed for desktop architectures"

Nope.

The reality is that everyone always thinks they can rebuild it better. Second (Third, Fourth, etc) system effect. It the very basis of NIH syndrome. So some small group at Google wants to research OS'. Whatever. The likelihood that this replaces Android, or that it is in anyone's imaginations that it actually will besides content writers outside of Google, seems very low.

shock• 8 years ago

Interfaces within linux change regularly, but only drivers that are checked into the main tree are updated.

This is why all of the Google's code sits in one big repo (reportedly). It allows them to refactor all dependent code at once when changing interfaces.

blihp• 8 years ago

How making a new OS achive this? What kind of problems Fuchsia could solve when Linux can’t solve?

The problems they are likely trying to solve are business and legal, not technical. Pesky things like not having to release keys bits of code under a 'free' license (i.e. they have no choice but to release any changes to the Linux kernel under GPL as that's what it requires.) Sure, they'll probably still release large chunks of source code (possibly under MIT/BSD, possibly under a less liberal license) but keep strategic bits closed source. Right now they have to do this via the clunky and somewhat obvious Google Play services layer. And then there's the constant potential exposure to lawsuits. etc.

By being able to decide on what pieces would be released under what licenses, it would allow them to prevent competitors from following in their footsteps as Amazon and various Chinese companies have done with Android. Things like this are the reason Samsung (one of Google's largest problems) keep pushing forward with their Tizen platform so that when the shift comes they have the ability to sidestep it if they want to.

CrI0gen• 8 years ago

I'm really suprised the article didn't mention anything about Tizen. For Google, Tizen looks like a big issue. At some point in the future, their biggest hardware seller, Samsung, will start switching all of their devices to running on Tizen and other partners in the Tizen Association (from wikipedia) are Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel, KT, NEC Casio, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Panasonic, Samsung, SK Telecom, Sprint. Google's going to have to get very aggressive with Fuchsia to compete with Tizen.

danmatte• 8 years ago

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/a-mod...

There's basically nothing new in the Bloomberg article.

on_and_off2• 8 years ago

no stable driver interface, they are still learning how to cope with this.

There is a ton of cruft in the APIs, like any large project would have.

One of the engineer in the Android framework team described creating APIs as generating future regrets.

Some of the mistakes are pretty small. Like internally the system reuse drawable instances in order to save memory, but instead of making this process entirely automatic, before calling let's say `setTint(color)`, you need to call `mutate()` so the UI framework spins a copy of the drawable for you. it would have been easy to integrate this behavior by default without having you know about mutate but since it was done differently, this behavior has been preserved in order to do not break retrocompatibility.

There are many small API issues like this. Big issues of course are corrected but often preserve the old behavior in case you are targetting an old version of the OS.

The View system is incredibly complex. Some of it is due to the inherent complexity of the problem, but some of it is due to the constraints of the time and some decisions that could have been better.

So there are many things you can improve by restarting from scratch and it is often easier than having to deal with the legacy APIs too.

menckenjr• 8 years ago

Then, of course, there's this: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

AmericanChopper• 8 years ago

What kind of problems Fuchsia could solve when Linux can’t solve?

I doubt this is really a big deal for Google, but a capabilities based OS lends itself a bit better to the mobile OS security model.

zellyn• 8 years ago

For those of you who want more information, and especially more accurate information, check out Fuchsia Fridays: https://9to5google.com/guides/fuchsia-friday/

Skylled4• 8 years ago

Thanks for your support.

forapurpose2• 8 years ago

I've been wondering why so many Bloomberg articles have been on the front page recently, maybe in the last 3-6 months. This OP seems like a good example because there has been coverage of Fuchsia from more technical sources for awhile and I doubt the Bloomberg article adds much. Or is the change in frequency of Bloomberg posts just a misperception on my part? I don't have any data.

Dunedan• 8 years ago

I also have the feeling that the amount of links to Bloomberg articles on HN significantly increased in the past months. I'm not a fan of that though, because Bloomberg articles seldomly cover really new topics or add in-depth information. Which is fine, as Bloomberg's audience is a different one than HN's, isn't it?

jasonvorhe• 8 years ago

Well, at least they're quoting and Google source with specifics instead of just relying on source code, docs and speculation.

Shooti• 8 years ago

Due to Mark Gurmans track record a Bloomberg rumor on a tech companies future plans for a product are almost as trustworthy as official PR from the company. More leaks = more representation on HN.

forapurpose2• 8 years ago

Fuschia is well-known (in tech circles); he's not breaking a new story.

pducks32• 8 years ago

It’s possible it’s because of Gurman (the author). Mark Gurman was a big Apple journo and has great sources. Bloomberg scooped him up and he’s been at the front of big Apple rumors and Bloomberg has risen because of them. Especially after Marzipan was confirmed in macOS Mojave source code.

jokoon• 8 years ago

Apparently it uses a micro kernel, zircon.

I'm curious about this kernel, honestly making something new from the ground up doesn't seem like a good idea.

I wonder how much of an advantage it was for android to use linux as a kernel, but I guess it was a gigantic advantage, which let them focus on what mattered in the development of android.

Other question: any kernel/OS developer here to explain if a micro kernel makes his job easier or harder? Having the flexibility of a micro kernel seems good, but I'm not sure it's that much important.

sergiomattei• 8 years ago

Eventually it turned into a disadvantage for them, as chip vendors nowadays ship extremely outdated and insecure versions of Linux and the driver model doesn't allow for frequent updates.

They made a step in the right direction with Project Treble though.

Symmetry• 8 years ago

I think the idea is to let phone developers create drivers and then ignore them while Google is still able to update the rest of the OS around them.

MayeulC• 8 years ago

making something new from the ground up doesn't seem like a good idea.

It isn't actually terribly difficult, the most difficult part being driver support. By using Linux as a base, Google gained a lot of driver support by default, among other things like a well-known base environment.

explain if a micro kernel makes his job easier or harder

Well, a microkernel usually has well-defined interfaces that allow drivers to communicate with the kernel, instead of these interfaces being decided by the compiler at compile-time. This in turn offers the guarantees of "ABI/API stability" that the Linux kernel usually offers to userspace programs: drivers don't need to be recompiled to work with a new kernel, so you can actually have binary drivers that continue to "work" long after the vendor stopped working on them. This also offers more room for stability guarantees (a driver that crashes can be restarted, as it's not the kernel panicking), and security (drivers don't have access to each other's data).

On the other hand, you trade a bit of performance and flexibility (from the developer's perspective) for this, by committing not to break compatibility. By now, advantages and inconvenient of microkernels vs monolithic ones are well understood and documented.

What's in for Google is mostly licensing-related: since they're making it; they are free to pick their favourite license. And I am pretty sure Google has been uncomfortable with the GPL for a while now. The same could be said about its hardware partners, and manufacturers that have to provide the source code for their drivers (when they comply at all).

Since a GPL kernel is one of the best things that happened to Android so far (allowing custom roms, open source projects, more transparency), I am extremely weary of fuschia, and looking forward to postmarketos as an alternative to android.

DeathArrow• 8 years ago

There's also Eelo: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Eelo-the-Google-less-Android-O...

ahartmetz3• 8 years ago

I'd like to know how Zircon compares to L4 (implementations).

When I asked Tanenbaum at FOSDEM why he didn't pick L4 for Minix 3, he just got annoyed and seemed to think I was asking why he didn't just use the L4 OS (which doesn't exist) instead of creating Minix 3 - or something. In any case I didn't get a good answer. He could have created his own implementation if he wanted, L4 is just a specification with a few existing high quality implementations that prove the concept...

ahartmetz3• 8 years ago

Note: I think he thought I thought L4 was an OS, I'm pretty sure he knows what L4 is.

lambda• 8 years ago

There's a set of docs on Fuchsia that you can read about if you'd like (https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/docs/+/master/the-book/)

There's some discussion of it already on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16813796

Some advantages of the Fuchsia architecture over Linux for Android:

* Capability based system; applications only get access to objects, including files, directories, other processes, etc via capabilities, so they can only affect those objects they have been given access to directly. This is much better for security and isolation of applications.

* Userspace drivers with a stable ABI, or with the possibility of versioned ABIs. This could allow them to ship updates to the underlying system without waiting for vendors, reducing fragmentation.

infinity0• 8 years ago

Oh so that's what the rust crates fuchsia-zircon and fuchsia-zircon-sys are for. They are dependencies of the mio and rand crates.

Cargo.toml links to https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/

drewda• 8 years ago

"The company must also settle some internal feuds. Some of the principles that Fuchsia creators are pursuing have already run up against Google’s business model. Google’s ads business relies on an ability to target users based on their location and activity, and Fuchsia’s nascent privacy features would, if implemented, hamstring this important business. There’s already been at least one clash between advertising and engineering over security and privacy features of the fledgling operating system, according to a person familiar with the matter. The ad team prevailed, this person said."

eganist3• 8 years ago

The ad team prevailed, this person said.

Of course they did.

A controversial idea, but you know how much easier this would be for everyone if Google offered an option for users to be paid for volunteering your information to them? It's a precedent most fledgling ad companies wouldn't be able to match... even if it's just a few dollars a month, or maybe 30ish bucks a year. It'd cut into Google's bottom line, but it would eradicate the competition.

And then on top of that, you've got the security and privacy wins by baking the product to be secure by default but allowing consumers to accept a paycheck to disable some of it for Google. That risk calculus works for plenty of people (if not for myself).

Google's wins:

• Security and Privacy by default

• Dismantling start-up competition who can't afford to pay for the data they harvest

• Growing marketshare.

Drawbacks:

• Immediate hit to Google's revenue stream

• Permanent assignment of value to data in the perception of consumers

The only big outstanding risk would be posed by rivals with large warchests able to subsidize a similar payment scheme, but honestly once that's done, the winner is a public which now has the ability to monetize their data.

epicide3• 8 years ago

What would be better is the ability to pay for Google not to sell your data. However, the new problem would be making sure they aren't selling your data, anyway.

curuinor• 8 years ago

Isn't the competition already mostly eradicated, except for Facebook? The other ad companies are orders of magnitude smaller.

Spooky23• 8 years ago

It would be too expensive. Google is making $40 every time someone clicks on many categories of ads. They probably have users generating them thousands of dollars a year.

scarface746• 8 years ago

I’ve got a better idea. Google could always ship a product that people are willing to pay enough for where it is a sustainable business without being as supported.

technofiend• 8 years ago

but you know how much easier this would be for everyone if Google offered an option for users to be paid for volunteering your information to them?

Have you not seen their Opinion Rewards app for Android? They do precisely that.

nameless912• 8 years ago

They already do this-it's called Google Opinion Rewards and it's how I feed my Clash Royale habit.

HillaryBriss• 8 years ago

Immediate hit to Google's revenue stream

but maybe only a temporary one. after knifing the babies (i mean honestly outcompeting the startups), Google could discontinue that option and stop all the payments.

at least for a while, until a fresh crop of foolhardy competitors boldly entered that market again.

RestlessMind2• 8 years ago

The main reason why this won't work is that majority of public simply prefers free ad-infested services over paid ad-free ones. Case in point - YouTube Red and it's abysmal adoption rate.

One might reasonable argue that YT Red just removes ads, but doesn't do anything for privacy / data collection. But I have two questions for them: 1. what makes you think people would gladly pay for privacy (any glaring example)? , 2. even if Google were to offer such an option, would you trust it?

matt4077• 8 years ago

People willing to accept money for their data are useless as advertising targets, because they have already proven that something is wrong about them, and that they have less money than others.

ilikehurdles2• 8 years ago

Would be nice if there were a competitor mobile platform to iOS that wasn't built from the ground up to sell you advertising based on personal data. I guess Blackberry was the last mobile OS that didn't need to know every detail of my pissing habits.

elithrar• 8 years ago

Sure, but Blackberry - specifically, the BBM service - had no qualms about setting up intercepting proxies with governments when pressured.

scj• 8 years ago

Blackberry gave the RCMP a global decryption key[0], then defended the practice[1]. Given the chance, they probably would have sold out their users as well.

[0] https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-canada-police-obtain...

[1] http://blogs.blackberry.com/2016/04/lawful-access-corporate-...

iainmerrick• 8 years ago

I take it you have a different problem with iOS? It seems to be pretty good on privacy, at least.

thinkingemote2• 8 years ago

When we are in our nursing homes later in life we will get to hear some interesting stories about the creation of these world changing technologies in a middle of the afternoon radio show.

foodstances• 8 years ago

I often wonder what kind of amazing company Google could be if only their cash cow was not from advertising, but something neutral and profitable like AT&T was to foster Bell Labs.

megy2• 8 years ago

The ad team prevailed, this person said.

Sure, don't they make >95% of all google profits.

_bxg1• 8 years ago

Here's a more thorough and technical overview:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/googles-fuchsia-os-o...

jasonmp85• 8 years ago

Did anyone think maybe using a pinkish shade for a Second System codename is asking for it to fail?

Apple had a Project Pink back in '88 to be the successor to System Software 6. They hoped to release it in 1993, instead buying NeXT in 1997 and launching OS X in 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system)#Pin...

Microsoft's Project Pink was the result of their Danger acquisition. It didn't fare well either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Kin

I wish Google the best of luck.

bitmapbrother8• 8 years ago

The Fuchsia name is derived from projects the primary Fuchsia OS developers previously worked on at Apple - Project Pink and Project Purple. Pink + Purple = Fuchsia.

bitmapbrother8• 8 years ago

This article seems to have gone through multiple edits to correct all of the incorrect technical facts, but it looks like they still have work to do.

Shifting away from using Linux would help Google’s legal case that its software isn’t reliant on Oracle.

abvdasker• 8 years ago

Moving from Linux, though, could have upsides for Google. Android’s use of the technology, which is distributed by Oracle Corp.

Yeah this is totally wrong.

remir3• 8 years ago

"One person who has spoken to Fuchsia staff described the effort simply: "It’s a senior-engineer retention project."

This has been my therory for a while. You see all these different projects competing against each other (multiple messaging apps are a good example) and you think: why is Google so unfocused? But what Google basically wants to do is hoard engineers so they don't leave and go work for competitors and make them stronger (or start their own companies that could compete against Google).

So Google's management figured out that if they give these enginners some cool stuff to work on, they'll stay at the company, even if the stuff they work on is a duplicate of something else the company has already done.

AFNobody• 8 years ago

Yup and if it turns out there are advantages to transition it into a real project.

refulgentis• 8 years ago

Different sources will have different spins. Surely the Fuchsia team wouldn't think they're in glorified daycare, it's unlikely their superiors would tell journalists they are.

kettlecorn• 8 years ago

I think Google's self-competition is something they are doing strategically.

If you look at the industry as a whole products wax and wane based on market trends. Market leading products often struggle to innovate under the weight of their own success and are eventually replaced by a new innovator that's doing something right.

Google, by virtue of creating many different types of products in one category somewhat insulates themselves from this effect. They have effectively infinite money, so from their perspective they can somewhat emulate the greater market internally. They can let "startup" style teams form internally so if someone supplants one of Google's products, it's likely to be a Google team.

There are significant downsides to this (eroding consumer trust) which may take their toll on Google with time.

dunpeal7• 8 years ago

Having multiple competing projects is not unheard of in the business world in general, and in high-achieving technology businesses in particular. Often, those outside the organization are only aware of the winning project, and the others are quietly discontinued, with many / most / all members moving to the winning team.

I know of several other prominent examples, but can't mention by name because I'd be breaking an NDA.

Also, Fuchsia is a successor, not a competing project, strictly speaking. It would be the "gauntlet" scenario if Google was running multiple ongoing projects all competing to "inherit" Android (which quite possible it does...)

sjm-lbm2• 8 years ago

If we still look at the messaging example, I honestly think this theory (if that really is what Google is doing) is backfiring spectacularly - the fragmented messaging standards mean that most Android users communicate using SMS, which is a laughably bad protocol in 2018. iMessage - boring old non-developed by a "startup" style-team iMessage - is so much better that I've often contemplated switching to iOS for that reason only.

The funny part is that they might be actually emulating an entire marketplace entirely within one company, but it often seems like it's a marketplace where a large entrenched lowest common denominator is the option that everyone uses and dislikes.

_m96l• 8 years ago

Per the article, Google has over 100 engineers working on Fuchsia. If these are all "senior engineers" that "Google is trying to retain", the cost of keeping them must be at least 50 million per year.

That's a lot of money to pay just for retention of people who are not producing anything of value, consuming many other resources (office space, network, hardware, perks), and deeply committed to a project that supposedly will never benefit their employer.

A rich employer may retain an unproductive employee for a limited amount of time if they expect it to ultimately pay off. It just doesn't make any sense to retain someone indefinitely if they're not going to produce anything of value, and (implicitly) will quit the moment you try to put them on any sort of real-world valuable work. Google is a public company with fiduciary responsibilities to its shareholders and a legally accountable board, it can't just throw tens of millions of dollars away without good reason or explanation.

You see all these different projects competing against each other (multiple messaging apps are a good example) and you think: why is Google so unfocused?

There are many good reasons to have multiple teams competing against each other, building the same product. Often it will bring a strong drive and pace to all competing projects, as well as cross-pollination, and eventually they often merge to a single deliverable that is better than any of the projects could produce individually.

what Google basically wants to do is hoard engineers

I'm not sure why all these improbable theories make more sense to you than the plain fact that Android was designed quite a few years ago, has many natural deficiencies, and - like all technologies - will eventually be replaced by a superior successor.

That's exactly what Fuchsia is about. Its existence does not require any elaborate conspiracy theory. On the contrary: given how strategically important the Android market niche is for Google, it would be very surprising if Google was not working on a viable successor. It's as if Sony didn't have a successor for the PS4 in the pipeline, and just expected it to sell forever, with minor patches here and there.

nnq• 8 years ago

It just doesn't make any sense to retain someone indefinitely if they're not going to produce anything of value

They likely will. Whenever a new projects starts, engineers can be recruited for it from the pre-vetted internal pool. Hiring and the ramp-up time for new hires would cost more. Yeah, if you're an ossified compnay rarely starting new projects it doesn't make sense. But if your Google this is not the case...

nostrademons6• 8 years ago

$50M is tiny compared to the opportunity cost of having 100 of your best engineers jump ship to a competitor or found a new one. Google will pay $50M for a startup with 10 proven engineers and then shut down their product, just so that they aren't on the open market where they can challenge the $50B+ golden goose.

Silicon Valley basically works on the principle of "Never let your employees do to you what you did to your past employer or competitors." There have been multiple cases where a small group of 10 or so engineers has quit en masse and then gone on to found or strengthen a billion-dollar competitor, eg. Shockley => Fairchild => Intel => AMD, HP => Apple => [General Magic, Claris, Radius, NeXT] => Apple, Cisco's revolving door of startups, [Western Digital, PARC, Bell Labs] => Google => Facebook. The cost to the company of this is easily in the hundreds of millions, oftentimes billions, and sometimes existential. It makes sense to blow $50M or so to keep a proven team of tech talent in-house.

ashelmire3• 8 years ago

If these are all "senior engineers" that "Google is trying to retain", the cost of keeping them must be at least 50 million per year.

Wait uh... are you saying seniors at Google make an average of $500k?

nevir• 8 years ago

the cost of keeping them must be at least 50 million per year.

There's a high likelihood that at least some of their work will be of value to the company—or, if everything pans out, they get a fancy new platform. The real motivation is probably somewhere in the middle (retention, product development).

This is a solid bet to make, especially when you are effectively not worried about the cost (thanks, ads!).

A lot of Google is heavily research focused like this: let engineers (mostly) freely explore complicated problem spaces. If it's a product—awesome!—see if there's market fit, and then grow it. If not, no problem; see where it, or parts thereof, can be applied elsewhere within Google.

Source: I worked there.

oscargrouch2• 8 years ago

That's a lot of money to pay just for retention of people who are not producing anything of value, consuming many other resources (office space, network, hardware, perks), and deeply committed to a project that supposedly will never benefit their employer.

I think Google figure it out its real bussiness like MacDonalds did: Not burgers, but real state bussiness. I think Google understood they are not in the make "valuable useful tech" bussiness as one is inclined to think, they are in the "tech talent retention bussiness".

Even if they dont use the talent, if they are able to lock the talent inside Google as a kid in a Circus, their competitors wont have access to the talent pool they need, and this will make a big monopoly on Google.

Of course, this is only possible if you have the ammount of cash and credentials Google have to attract tech people like Disney do to kids.

I think this is their real primary mission; attract human talent, retain and ultimately lock it from the competition.

Do you ever wonder why the startup scene is so dry lately, even with so many enginners and tech focused people no short of ideas? The titans are just sucking all the oxigene in the room making everyone else choke.

dplgk• 8 years ago

they often merge to a single deliverable that is better than any of the projects could produce individually.

Do you have an example of this?

sharcerer3• 8 years ago

All major OS have gone kernel changes over time. Windows,MacOS,now Android. Simple. Of course, lots of other factors as well like Oracle lawsuit.

Taken from reddit: I don't think it will be "starting over," just a major platform change. Imagine Fuchsia being Android 13.0. Every OS maker does a major platform rewrite along these lines eventually.

Windows moved from DOS to the NT kernel.

Apple moved from the classic Mac OS nanokernel (is this the right name?) to the Unix-like XNU kernel with OS X.

Google could trade Linux for Fuchsia's kernel.

These projects are always codenamed something else at first. They always come with big compatibility problems that are overcome with time or emulation layers. Sometimes there are major UI changes, sometimes the UI is built to closely replicate the old OS, but everyone does a huge "reboot" transition like this eventually.

debt• 8 years ago

"It’s a senior-engineer retention project."

First time I've ever heard this phrase. It's funny because it's true.

ashleyn• 8 years ago

HP, Xerox, and AT&T figured that out decades ago.

antoinevg• 8 years ago

Bwauhahahaha.

martin1975• 8 years ago

I can already hear professor Tanenbaum's evil laughter, followed by "I told you so" :)

Although for the life of me, I cannot figure out why Google suffers so hard from NIH syndrome and didn't go with something like seL4/Genode. Do they just want control of absolutely everything they touch?

tonfa• 8 years ago

I thought they started from an existing microkernel actually.

techsin101• 8 years ago

Someone please answer this... I want to learn this.

Fuschia is getting swift support Flutter runs on fuschia Flutter uses dart

Do I learn dart or swift, personally I want to learn swift. Flutter only supports dart??? Fuschia supports swift

Is flutter going to support swift

LyndsySimon• 8 years ago

Do I learn dart or swift

I'm not terribly familiar with the landscape, but my suggestion is broadly applicable: learn both.

A developer shouldn't be constrained to a single language. Pick the one that's suitable for the project you want to work on. For the next project, do the same. In my experience you'll find it progressively easier to pick up new languages (and stacks, and paradigms, etc.) each time you do it.

IMO, a developer's goal should be to understand and implement design patterns, not individual languages.

... and for the record, I say this as someone who prefers a single language (Python) to all others I've encountered.

5thbootloader• 8 years ago

Learn dart instead of swift.

Skylled4• 8 years ago

You can write software for Fuchsia without using Flutter, but Flutter is the most friendly way at present.

In a basic sense, Flutter is based in Dart, but if you want to call into another language like Swift, there is a way to do so, called FIDL. I'm not sure if Swift has FIDL bindings yet, but I'm sure that it and many other languages will, in time.

Even today Flutter has support for Swift code on iOS the same way it supports ObjC, via MethodChannels. (This is also true for Java and Kotlin code on Android.)

mitochondrion• 8 years ago

Have you encountered Julia, and if so, what did you think of it?

zapita• 8 years ago

Google Is Quietly Working on a Successor to Android

So quietly that they pitched a story about it to Bloomberg.

ant6n• 8 years ago

So quietly, it's almost nefarious

robocat• 8 years ago

Surely Google are setting themselves up for another $5G EU antitrust fine?

I thought one of the core reasons for the fine was the restriction in the Mobile Applications Distribution Agreement that a company couldn't develop a competing OS...

Yet Google is?

Alternatively they will use it as the core for a new "Nexus" line to compete with Apple, and not licence Fuscia as a platform (avoiding dominance of the mobile "Platform Market" by doing what Apple are doing).

rlac16• 8 years ago

There was no absolute restriction on developing a competing OS (Samsung does it with Tizen for example). My understanding is that the restriction was on forking the Android codebase and shipping an OS based on that without the Play Store (you would then lose your Play Store license on all devices). Even then I'm not sure whether it's as strict as that, considering Xiaomi and others do it.

endlessvoid94• 8 years ago

PR piece = "quietly"

jmull• 8 years ago

It sounds very unlikely Fuchsia will replace Android or Chrome OS. They list a bunch of Android issues, but which of these can’t be addressed more incrementally through Android?

Google probably needs fewer OSs, not more.

The idea that this is a senior engineer retention project is what actually makes sense. I think it will probably yield some useful results that can be harvested for their other systems, or perhaps it can fill a niche not already well fillled.

c0d3man• 8 years ago

No matter what, We must need a new OS, encompassing big screen devices as well as small IOT devices. No more JAVA and JVM. I had loved it for 15 years but now I hate it most; I am sick and tired of developing Android because of the huge fragmentation and poor compatibility of different screen sizes. Now is a little bit better than before in terms of that but the fundamental issue cannot be fixed from the root core unless the kernel and android jvm are replaced. Some Googler said "Android system was wrong from the beginning". I would love to see Fuchsia in real as soon as possible. I've recently learnt Flutter, which is going to become the primary User interface SDK/framework of Fuchsia. I recommend you guys to learn Dart and Flutter if you are a UI developer. Be leaders of them. In a nutshell, Fu[lutter/chsia] is the future for mobile/embedded developers over the next 30 years in this AI/IoT era.

Project Fuchsia: Google Is Quietly Working on a Successor to Android

Related Stories