Friday, 17 August 2018

Project "Fuchsia": Google is quietly working on a successor to Android !

The existence of Google’s Fuchsia project is nothing new, but Bloomberg has managed to squeeze new details out of the team responsible for the secretive OS. One discovery is that Fuchsia will be capable of running all of Google’s in-house gadgets (e.g., Pixel phones and smart speakers), as well as third-party Android or Chrome OS devices. If all goes to plan, Fuchsia will replace Android entirely.

The project, known as Fuchsia, was created from scratch to overcome the limitations of Android as more personal devices and other gadgets come online. It’s being designed to better accommodate voice interactions and frequent security updates and to look the same across a range of devices, from laptops to tiny internet-connected sensors. Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai has set his company in this direction -- toward artificial intelligence services that reach consumers


According to one of the staff, engineers said they would like to embed Fuchsia on networked home devices such as voice-activated speakers within three years and then move on to larger devices such as laptops. Ultimately, the team wants to swap its system for Android, the software that powers more than three-quarters of smartphones in the world, people said, who had asked not to be notified about internal matters. That's supposed to happen in the next half-decade, one person said.

But Pichai and Hiroshi Lockheimer, his deputy running Android and Chrome, have yet to sign up for Fuchsia on any road map, these people said. Executives must be careful to overtake Android as the software supports dozens of hardware partners, thousands of developers and billions of mobile ad dollars.

But members of the Fuchsia team have discussed a grander plan that is being reported here for the first time: Creating a single operating system capable of running all the company’s in-house gadgets, like Pixel phones and smart speakers, as well as third-party devices that now rely on Android.

Another benefit for Fuchsia: The project provides a technical challenge to several experienced open source hackers in the business. As so often Google has equipped this tedious, time-consuming company with many years of staff instead of losing it to rivals. One person who spoke to Fuchsia employees simply described the effort: "It's a senior engineer retention project."

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