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

#141

Post by CrI0gen » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 10:18 PM UTC

blihp wrote: post #63

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.…

> 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…

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.

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

#142

Post by Longhanks » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 10:20 PM UTC

jedieaston wrote: post #103

sjm-lbm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

I wonder if you look at the stats whether or not SMS is actually the most popular form of communication on Android. I live in the US, where I use iMessage and SMS is the most popular, but I hear all the time on Reddit that no one uses SMS outside stupid America and everyone uses WhatsApp/Signal/(Chinese one I'm forgetting). Google needs to pick one, no doubt, but I wonder how relevant it is that they do (Android has…

Can confirm, in Germany, where Android is >75%, everybody uses WhatsApp (iOS users, too).

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

#143

Post by remir » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 10:21 PM UTC

dunpeal wrote: post #112

nostrademons wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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 y…

> $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. See my comment to nnq. You can't just take "100 of your best engineers", and stick them on some bogus project that regularly gets raided for its best talent by hiring managers. If they'd rather work on a bogus project than on a real product, they're not very useful engineers. The project…

Who said Fuchsia was some bogus project and a waste of talent and resources? My original comment was that Google was willing to let its enginners work on duplicate project so they remain at Google instead of leaving to work elsewhere. If Fuchsia turns out great, that will be a win for Google. It's not like these enginneers are just being paid to kill time.

Google bought Android, then also created Chrome OS and is now making a tthird OS named Fuchsia.

They had Gchat that they scrapped for Hangouts, which they pivoted into a business chat (Meet), but the Hangouts client is still available for the general public. They also made Allo, which eventually went nowhere, so now they're pushing for the adoption of RCS (Android Messages).

Gchat, Hangouts, Meet, Allo, RCS. That's 5 messaging apps right there.

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

#144

Post by dunpeal » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 10:22 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #139

dunpeal wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So their manager asks them "Well, what is it you really want to work on? Maybe we can make it happen here and you don't have to leave all the perks of Google behind." The engineer says "I've always wanted to do OS development, and there's a bunch of neat research developments like capabilities that haven't yet been incorporated in a production OS." The manager says, "Hmm, I know of some guys over in this other depa…

Wave and Hello.com each had over 50 engineers, and Andy Rubin spent several hundred million (perhaps billions) on robotics acquisitions, all for projects that ended up getting canceled. At some point the difference between "engineer retention project" and "risky venture that probably won't pan out but could win big" ceases to matter. Larry Page is exceptionally good at "Heads I win, tails I win even more" gambits - h…

> Wave and Hello.com each had over 50 engineers, and Andy Rubin spent several hundred million (perhaps billions) on robotics acquisitions, all for projects that ended up getting canceled.

And they all got canceled once their business case became void.

None of these were bogus projects. They all initially had a business case, and were run by engineers who proved themselves before. When that business case fail to pan out - they were canceled.

> At some point the difference between "engineer retention project" and "risky venture that probably won't pan out but could win big" ceases to matter.

Maybe to you as an employee. Not to Google as a business, nor its shareholders.

If I'm a Google shareholder, and you're wasting hundreds of millions of dollars of my money with nothing to show for it but some vague fears that "my engineers will go to competitors", then I'm going to be unhappy. Beyond a certain point, you're opening yourself up to lawsuits and even criminal charges (Google is a public company).

All of your examples are projects that were interesting and had some passionate senior engineers pushing them forward, but also had a business case. When the business case went bust, so did the project.

To support OP's assertion that Fuchsia is just a retention project with no future, you'd have to show a project of its size (or any size, really) run for the sole purpose of retention with no plausible business case.

I don't think such a thing exists, and it's not in any of your examples.

I have some personal experience with Wave. It had a plausible business case and Google was promoting it heavily. It wasn't bogus. I'm sure the same is true for the others.

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

#145

Post by matt4077 » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 10:25 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…

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.

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

#146

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 10:29 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #139

dunpeal wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So their manager asks them "Well, what is it you really want to work on? Maybe we can make it happen here and you don't have to leave all the perks of Google behind." The engineer says "I've always wanted to do OS development, and there's a bunch of neat research developments like capabilities that haven't yet been incorporated in a production OS." The manager says, "Hmm, I know of some guys over in this other depa…

Wave and Hello.com each had over 50 engineers, and Andy Rubin spent several hundred million (perhaps billions) on robotics acquisitions, all for projects that ended up getting canceled. At some point the difference between "engineer retention project" and "risky venture that probably won't pan out but could win big" ceases to matter. Larry Page is exceptionally good at "Heads I win, tails I win even more" gambits - h…

I would not characterize fiber as having any notable impact on the country at large's internet speeds/caps.

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

#147

Post by IBM » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #127

dunpeal wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $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. See my comment to nnq. You can't just take "100 of your best engineers", and stick them on some bogus project that regularly gets raided for its best talent by hiring managers. If they'd rather work on a bogus project than on a real product, they're not very useful engineers. The project…

> Have you worked for a FAANG? I was at Google for 5.5 years and was the beneficiary of an engineer-retention project for a year of that. I'm now working on a startup. Think of it from the company's perspective: they have an engineer who has already been "paid off" in the sense of having generated more revenue for the company than they are likely to get in salary during a lifetime, and is likely independently wealthy…

Your comments have been enlightening. Thanks for confirming what I always suspected [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12410662

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

#148

Post by tonfa » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

martin1975 wrote: post #64

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?

I thought they started from an existing microkernel actually.

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

#149

Post by kbumsik » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 10:58 PM UTC

CrI0gen wrote: post #141

blihp wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

Tizen has been 6 years now and there is almost zero percentage of smartphone market and it has become only for Samsung products (look at the association list. Huawei is the only big consumer device company). This would never threat Google.

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

#150

Post by izacus » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 11:02 PM UTC

IBM wrote: post #147

nostrademons wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you worked for a FAANG? I was at Google for 5.5 years and was the beneficiary of an engineer-retention project for a year of that. I'm now working on a startup. Think of it from the company's perspective: they have an engineer who has already been "paid off" in the sense of having generated more revenue for the company than they are likely to get in salary during a lifetime, and is likely independently wealthy…

Your comments have been enlightening. Thanks for confirming what I always suspected [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12410662

Funny how you only took into account the post that confirms your preset bias.