Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

Ah, Fuchsia... another of Google's solutions looking for a problem.

I remember hearing about it and immediately asking "what is the market for this?" and not being satisfied with the answer.

On the one side you have Samsung, who are unhappy enough with their dependence on Google that they'll not likely eat the cost of moving from Android to something else that has no strategic benefit to them (as far as I could tell, anyway).

So what does that leave? Google making its own devices. I don't know this to be the case but I strongly suspect the intent was for the Pixel line was (and may still be?) intended to be the spark for Google being a vertically integrated first-party seller of mobile devices. What I mean is these aren't just proof-of-concept or developer devices.

The problem there is by doing that they'll hurt their relationships with Android OEMs and it'd take a long time to fill that void, if that's even possible.

So where else? The obvious answer is... Chromecast. This is a hardware product Google has had a good amount of success with. It's already first-party.

A recently leaked report [1] seems to indicate that the next Chromecast will be Android TV. That is (IMHO) bad news for Fuchsia.

You have to also take into account that during the time Fuchsia has been around (which must be 4+ years by now?) there's been a change at the top with Sundar replacing Larry. That's always a dangerous time for high-profile and high-cost (literally $billions) projects with no customers. Sundar came from Chrome. Fuchsia didn't. You have to ask questions about who was the original (SVP+) cheerleader who got it off the ground and funded it? Was larry on board? Is Sundar/ Does that sponsor enjoy the same support under Sundar that they did under Larry?

I don't know the answer to these questions, just that they matter. marissa Mayer's departure from Google was largely a product of a change at the top as she enjoyed Eric's favour but all signs pointed to Larry not being as big as a fan.

Fuchsia probably should've been called Graphene. Graphene can do everything but leave the lab, after all.

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/googles-leaked-tv-do...

I wonder what the ratio of C:C++ is. Sounds like they're using C as a restricted C++ anyway, which is interesting.

Didn't see the article address power management in the context of things that might be running idle in the background. That would seem to be to be a major incentive for an OS that's going be used on mobile, which needs to respond to changes in environment on the move (changing WLAN, network, beacons etc.)

Blackberry's QNX ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX ) is a microkernel architecture and was designed with this in mind - https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.3.0SP3/neutrino/sys_ar... ...

> Traditional power management (PM) is aimed at conserving the power of computers that are usually left on. The general-purpose approach to PM for desktop PCs -- or even for "mobile" PCs, such as laptops -- doesn't take into account the specific demands of embedded systems, which can be off (or on standby) much of the time, yet must respond to external events in predictable ways.

I don't know if it's inherently more efficient to implement this type of thing with a microkernel but given the iBeacons and similar effectively "failed" ( https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/27/why-android-nearby-ibeaco...) due to power and sensitivity, this could be a big enough incentive to start a new OS

CTRL-F dart

No matches.

I wonder how many people can look past the kernel when discussing what this is and how it’s different from Android?

A monopoly is the sole supplier of a product or service and the fact that bing exists makes search not a monopoly. In the concept of antitrust, the United States Department of Justice does not use that term directly and instead talks about power and the Supreme Court has defined market power as "the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market," and monopoly power as "the power to control prices or exclude competition" [0]. Google does not posses monopoly power over search as they do not exclude you from using bing, nor do they control prices (bing in fact sets a lower price than Googles free in that they will pay you to use their search engine). They do have market power though.

[0]: https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-...