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

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

#171

Post by Apocryphon »

jonny_eh wrote: post #168
myth_drannon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it has a high chance of dying?

It's based on Dart, a language that already failed to take off in browsers? Just a guess.

I think it's more of an issue with it coming from and being maintained by Google. I think aversion to Dart is overrated; it's a boringly stable and straightforward language, and I'm puzzled that mobile developers aren't more open to learning it, given how Objective-C/Swift/Kotlin were languages that most had to learn for developing on their respective smartphone.

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

#172

Post by lambda »

jokoon wrote: post #25

Apparently it uses a micro kernel, zircon. I'm curious about this kernel, honestly making something new from the ground up doesn't seem like a good idea. I wonder how much of an advantage it was for android to use linux as a kernel, but I guess it was a gigantic advantage, which let them focus on what mattered in the development of android. Other question: any kernel/OS developer here to explain if a micro kernel mak…

There's a set of docs on Fuchsia that you can read about if you'd like (https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/docs/+/master/the-book/)

There's some discussion of it already on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16813796

Some advantages of the Fuchsia architecture over Linux for Android:

* Capability based system; applications only get access to objects, including files, directories, other processes, etc via capabilities, so they can only affect those objects they have been given access to directly. This is much better for security and isolation of applications.

* Userspace drivers with a stable ABI, or with the possibility of versioned ABIs. This could allow them to ship updates to the underlying system without waiting for vendors, reducing fragmentation.

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

#173

Post by remir »

izacus wrote: post #151
remir wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

RCS isn't an app (and neither it's something that Google built).

But they acquired Jibe, which they now offer as a service to telecom companies, so with Android Messages, they're invested in RCS.

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

#174

Post by ashelmire »

ummonk wrote: post #117
ashelmire wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Wait uh... are you saying seniors at Google make an average of $500k?

That seems like a low estimate of the cost of a senior SWE at Google. They probably earn at least 400k in cash + bonus + stock, and there are employer costs beyond that (office space, benefits, payroll taxes).

Glassdoor has avg total comp for senior swes at google at 193k...

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

#175

Post by w4tson »

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…

This makes sense to me. I wonder how much the secret sauce comes into play. For example blowing a good/great engineer is one thing. But worse if they can apply some of the seemingly unique techniques google used to do engineering.

I’m thinking of things like the build system, mono repo & the borg etc

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

#176

Post by eganist »

technofiend wrote: post #87
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…

>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? Have you not seen their Opinion Rewards app for Android? They do precisely that.

That's a wholly different context. In that context, you're not selling usage data, you're selling conscious opinions/preferences. More than anything, all that does is confirm the assumptions Google is already making about your tastes based on your usage.

This is about valuing the usage data itself that's passively collected on the Android platform.

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

#177

Post by forapurpose »

Shooti wrote: post #39
forapurpose wrote: post #17

I've been wondering why so many Bloomberg articles have been on the front page recently, maybe in the last 3-6 months. This OP seems like a good example because there has been coverage of Fuchsia from more technical sources for awhile and I doubt the Bloomberg article adds much. Or is the change in frequency of Bloomberg posts just a misperception on my part? I don't have any data.

Due to Mark Gurmans track record a Bloomberg rumor on a tech companies future plans for a product are almost as trustworthy as official PR from the company. More leaks = more representation on HN.

Fuschia is well-known (in tech circles); he's not breaking a new story.

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

#178

Post by dplgk »

_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…

> they often merge to a single deliverable that is better than any of the projects could produce individually.

Do you have an example of this?

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

#179

Post by fyi_see_fyi »

ashelmire wrote: post #174
ummonk wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a low estimate of the cost of a senior SWE at Google. They probably earn at least 400k in cash + bonus + stock, and there are employer costs beyond that (office space, benefits, payroll taxes).

Glassdoor has avg total comp for senior swes at google at 193k...

I am very surprised if that's the case.

For what it's worth, I just started at Google as a Senior SWE this summer. My base is in the 180s. With an average annual bonus, my moving/starting bonus, and stock grant (ignoring stock price movements), my first four years should be 400ish...very high 300s really.

BTW, https://www.levels.fyi/ is another source of data which might prove useful

190 total comp is more in line with what I expect for an early career person. Welcome to 2018 tech company salaries.

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

#180

Post by nradov »

user5994461 wrote: post #140
jedieaston wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It depends on the country. Some places you have to pay per SMS, some places it's free. SMS cannot be sent across borders, a big problem when traveling or living abroad. WhatsApp is free SMS, from and to anywhere. It's an attractive offer for most of the world.

SMS can be sent across borders in most of the world.
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