Google is (not) bringing Fuchsia OS to Android devices

I find that writing which speaks of Google as a single "it" misses the mark. I say this because the Googlers who write here show many disparate views and pressures to deliverable.

Sure, we think "there is one vision" but I suspect, there will be people inside the tent who still think this is a good idea, or a variation of it, and so (not) is mostly conjectural, because nobody who CAN say with authority what is or is not being done, is going to want to commit until they understand how it affects their KPIs.

Considering why Google acquired Android in the first place, Some of this is a bit bizarre. You would think by now, there was a roadmap which made sense across the generations. We're at Android 15. Thats an awful lot of time in that model of the world and Fuschia is on what release trajectory?

This project has been a complete cluster f since the beginning. I was excited when it was announced, though it seemed to get more and more relegated to nothingness since.

Now it's going to run in a VM in an already 'slow' os? For what possible reason?

I guess by now, even its use on Google Nest Hub isn't even certain.

I had high hopes for the project, but it looks like a keeping engineers busy kind of thing, a pure cost center, without any revenue to keep it going besides Google Nest Hub being shipped with it.

It's a wonder how it wasn't axed already.

Replacing an already very successful OS with a rewritten one, including a completely new kernel -- that would fundamentally break backward compatibility. And therefore it simply doesn't happen.

Only Apple could perhaps pull that off by forcing it on everyone by way of controlling the hardware base. Google and Microsoft don't have that amount of control.

I really believe we are not able to ship big new software projects anymore. If there isn't a pile of garbage to build up on...it's going to be vaporware. What a shame I was really excited about fuchsia in the beginning.

If you want to be able to run Fuchsia and Fuchsia apps on devices without having to first install a complete new OS - which might require root - this seems like a great advancement.

For me, if there's a Fuchsia app on the Play Store, or one I can easily sideload, I'll definitely try it out.

It could just be a stop-gap, or a low-risk test. They haven't said that it won't properly come to Android devices - if anything, this shows that there is interest for it.

Wouldn't it be a problem for Nest devices running on Fuchsia OS to get the hardware support they need? Most companies building consumer electronics products rely on hardware vendors to provide working kernels, drivers, etc. Speculatively, if you were able to leverage Android/Linux hardware support without the overhead of the rest of the Android OS, that would free up Nest from having to handle that problem.

I translate this to: even google doesn't have enough leverage to force chips vendors to write drivers for fushia when linux is so ubiquitous.

When Fuchsia first came out, I was interested to go deep dive into it and be an early adopter/contributor. Good that I did not put in my time investment. There is always a risk with new projects but with Google there seems to be a longer wait and watch phase before you really double down on the project.

>It’s not clear why

What Google revenue streams would full Fushsia cannabilize? Lack of USB->HDMI also bummer on pixel devices. I could probably convince a lot of people to migrate to chrome/fuschia/google OS if all it took was slapping their old phone to a usb hub. Well I could a few years ago, google kill services / lack of direction have put me off recommending any service by them. Still, seems like Google has a pathway to get into the Apple hardware game but simply chooses not to.

Oh no, who could’ve thought that Google won’t replace most popular OS in the world with experimental thing that has nothing behind it but tech journalist hype?

Android is going to eat Chrome, so would not be surprised to see Fuschia team layoffs as well as Chrome OS team layoffs in the next few months. Hard to say but from a revenue perspective the non-Android teams look as redundant as much of Motorola.

https://blog.chromium.org/2024/06/building-faster-smarter-ch...