Project Fuchsia: Google Is Quietly Working on a Successor to Android • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by nnq » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

_m96l wrote: post #86

remir wrote: post #60

"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 ma…

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 supposed…

> 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...

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

#92

Post by tootie » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

dunpeal wrote: post #88

kettlecorn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 insu…

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…

I've heard that Intel used to do this. They would have separate teams working on next gen chips. Eventually they'd have a bake off and pick a winner and the rest would get written off as R&D. I'm guessing they at least pick up some learnings from the dead projects.

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

#93

Post by nameless912 » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

eganist wrote: post #40

drewda wrote: post #32

> "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 an…

> 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…

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

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

#94

Post by s17n » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #75

eganist wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Google is a consumer software company. Consumers aren't willing to pay for software.

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

#95

Post by ilikehurdles » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:09 PM UTC

iainmerrick wrote: post #82

ilikehurdles wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Nope, I like competition, and until I see some I'll stick with iOS. They're way better on privacy than others.

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

#96

Post by tootie » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

simosx wrote: post #2

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. Shifti…

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

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

#97

Post by ant6n » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

zapita wrote: post #90

> Google Is Quietly Working on a Successor to Android So quietly that they pitched a story about it to Bloomberg.

So quietly, it's almost nefarious

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

#98

Post by sjm-lbm » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:12 PM UTC

kettlecorn wrote: post #83

remir wrote: post #60

"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 ma…

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 insu…

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.

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

#99

Post by menckenjr » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:16 PM UTC

on_and_off wrote: post #89

kbumsik wrote: post #15

> "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.…

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…

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

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

#100

Post by sharcerer » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:17 PM UTC

remir wrote: post #60

"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 ma…

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.