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Fuchsia is cool from an OS perspective but isn’t the problem that there simply isn’t a business case for it? I see people comparing it to Chrome but the busine

Fuchsia is cool from an OS perspective but isn’t the problem that there simply isn’t a business case for it? I see people comparing it to Chrome but the business case for Chrome is massive; protecting Google’s search and advertisement surveillance monopoly by avoiding to have to pay Apple and others big bucks to have Google as default search engine.

pjmlp 4y ago
The business case would be to replace Linux kernel on Android.
- easytiger 4y ago
  Which in turn seems like a weak case because android presently performs very well
  - wyldfire 4y ago
    From Google's point of view they likely believe that a microkernel could more easily be secured than a monolithic kernel. Also, it's probably great [from their point of view] to have control over their OS and its "community".
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    And Google has spent so much time pushing rust for Linux.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    In all these years Google has been replacing most of the GPL stuff on Android, dropping GCC for clang, moving driver infrastructure out of kernel space with Project Treble, and so on, the Linux kernel is the only thing left, that would be the business case.
    - blibble 4y ago
      replacing "the only thing left" is not a business case (especially where "the only thing left" is more than the sum of the rest put together) replacing the GNU userland reduces legal risk and increases operational flexibility significantly due to GPL3's tivoisation/patent clauses however the kernel isn't GPL3 (and never will be)
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        It is, given the non-copyleft nature from Fuchsia.
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  For something to be a (good) business case it really has to save or make money loosely proportional to the number of people working on it.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Reducing all those people that are still around to push upstream changes.
- Tozen 4y ago
  But maybe they fear stepping away, because that can mean less influence in the Linux sphere and possible rise of competition. And since the Oracle decision, they don't have to make any moves that would jeopardize the status quo. If they allow things to stay as they are, they are arguably fine. They can afford to move slowly and extra carefully or not at all. Fuchsia seems more about extra insurance, just in case.
- stuaxo 4y ago
  And eventually all the Java on Android - which apart from the issue around licensing would hopefully make the experience of using Android phones better.
  - UltraViolence 4y ago
    I don't see why this would make the experience better. Java has been a huge part of Android's success allowing for backwards compatibility in a smooth manner. Java should also be given credit for Android's stability, due to its lack of memory safety errors. IMHO Google shouldn't pull-back from using Java (or Kotlin). Rust could be an option but that would certainly degrade Android's developer experience.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Worth pointing out that at the time Google first launched Chrome the business case didn't seem clear. The product itself was compelling, but it wasn't clear what Google would do with it and why. (Now we know)
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  Yeah and Google’s motto used to be “don’t be evil”. Now it is a bit more like “yeah we are a nasty monopoly that spies on people, watcha gonna do about it”. Times have changed but maybe the underlying factors driving the business were always the same.
- hyperman1 4y ago
  There was plenty of discussion on this topic at the time, and there seemed to be a rough consensus: chrome was the google vote for choosing the direction of the www. As other voters, we had internet explorer, where Microsoft basically decided to strangle the web and end evolution after it won the browser war, just to keep windows relevant. We had firefox, where mozilla is forever on life support and never very well managed. We had safari, only a valid choice in the apple world. So google's survival depended on the goodwill of an enemy actively trying to kill them, a drunk zombie, and an at best uninterested party. In this world, google brought much better security, much faster javascript execution speeds, much better rendering. All of these were building blocks for a higher level of web-based applications. I think everyone was surprised about how good chrome fulfilled its role. The desktop never got its central role back, to the point that electron a.k.a. chrome is now the dominant desktop gui paradigm for microsoft itself. Here is one random example from 2008: https://channeldailynews.com/news/the-business-case-for-googles-chrome/8152 https://channeldailynews.com/news/the-business-case-for-goog...
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  I think it was pretty obvious at the time. I don't recall anyone being surprised by it, except maybe how large the budget was. Google was paying for every search referral from browsers since nearly the start. If you search with their browser, they don't pay anyone else.
deaddodo 4y ago
The business case is obvious: Google has little control over Android due to historical licensing and external dependencies (Java is the big one). Building their own OS with its own user space gives them the same control Apple has over iOS. In addition, the team working on it has made the argument that there is a technical benefit and that Linux + ART has failed to scale (to their needs). You combine both of those factors and you end up with a bespoke kernel, with a home brew environment (Dart-first, with Rust as a complement) and an Android ABI abstraction or virtualization (similar to Microsoft’s approach) to run legacy software until it’s phased out.
- reyqn 4y ago
  Well thanks, now I'm afraid fuschia could succeed.
  - ulfw 4y ago
    It's from Google, it won't. Which product from the last decade has won their respective market? Google 2000s is way different from Google 2020s.
    - rvz 4y ago
      Gmail?, G Suite?, Android?, Chrome (and the entire ecosystem around it)? Their presence in the web is so extremely entrenched, it is quite hilarious to already write them off over a obvious market correction. Google is fine. They just over hired just like the rest of the companies did. The free / cheap money era had to come to an end.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        Literally none of those successes* are from the last decade, which was GP’s point. Google’s core business appears sound (as an outsider). They’ve struggled to stamp out repeated successes (because that’s inherently hard, not because they suck). * G-suite arguably hasn’t won its category at all and Android has won in install base, but probably not in overall economic value. Gmail and Chrome have earned the hat-tip and nod-with-respect.
jeffbee 4y ago
Here you have simply assumed that the business case for Fuchsia must be externally visible to consumers. Why assume this? The overwhelming majority of Google's software runs on Google's computers and you have never seen it. Perhaps they would consider it a success even if the only role for Fuchsia is in their datacenters. There are abundant reasons why Google would want a non-Linux operating system internally.
- yencabulator 4y ago
  When gVisor was released to the public, my conspiracy theory was that the future of Google Container Engine was gonna be gVisor-on-Fuchsia instead of current gVisor-on-Linux. Consumers couldn't tell the difference, gVisor is the one implementing the user-visible "Linux" on both. (What's visible of Fuchsia doesn't quite support running on "big computers" well enough for that to be true...)
- UltraViolence 4y ago
  > here are abundant reasons why Google would want a non-Linux operating system internally. You may be in the right, but I personally don't see no reason for it. Linux is the best supported operating system in the world and Google always has the option to alter the OS if need be. I do believe Fuchsia is vastly more secure and stabler than Linux, which could be a benefit, but Google isn't exactly being pilfered by miscreants on a daily basis, so that benefit is in doubt.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    Google pays for hundreds of engineers working on the Linux kernel, who spend a lot of their time arguing with Linux maintainers about what should or should not be upstreamed, and painstakingly grooming their internal diffs vs upstream. You can imagine why not having to do that would be easier.
    - hulitu 4y ago
      They don't have to do this. They can maintain their own patches.
UltraViolence 4y ago
I see Fuchsia's benefit mostly in security and stability. Linux is one big blob with potentially huge security holes in it, many of which simply haven't yet been discovered (except maybe by intelligence agencies). Fuchsia's architecture is extremely resilient and secure by design and there's very little change culprits will be able to breach its security.

pjmlp 4y ago

The business case would be to replace Linux kernel on Android.

easytiger 4y ago
Which in turn seems like a weak case because android presently performs very well
- wyldfire 4y ago
  From Google's point of view they likely believe that a microkernel could more easily be secured than a monolithic kernel. Also, it's probably great [from their point of view] to have control over their OS and its "community".
- Gigachad 4y ago
  And Google has spent so much time pushing rust for Linux.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  In all these years Google has been replacing most of the GPL stuff on Android, dropping GCC for clang, moving driver infrastructure out of kernel space with Project Treble, and so on, the Linux kernel is the only thing left, that would be the business case.
  - blibble 4y ago
    replacing "the only thing left" is not a business case (especially where "the only thing left" is more than the sum of the rest put together) replacing the GNU userland reduces legal risk and increases operational flexibility significantly due to GPL3's tivoisation/patent clauses however the kernel isn't GPL3 (and never will be)
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      It is, given the non-copyleft nature from Fuchsia.
throwaway4good 4y ago
For something to be a (good) business case it really has to save or make money loosely proportional to the number of people working on it.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Reducing all those people that are still around to push upstream changes.
Tozen 4y ago
But maybe they fear stepping away, because that can mean less influence in the Linux sphere and possible rise of competition. And since the Oracle decision, they don't have to make any moves that would jeopardize the status quo. If they allow things to stay as they are, they are arguably fine. They can afford to move slowly and extra carefully or not at all. Fuchsia seems more about extra insurance, just in case.
stuaxo 4y ago
And eventually all the Java on Android - which apart from the issue around licensing would hopefully make the experience of using Android phones better.
- UltraViolence 4y ago
  I don't see why this would make the experience better. Java has been a huge part of Android's success allowing for backwards compatibility in a smooth manner. Java should also be given credit for Android's stability, due to its lack of memory safety errors. IMHO Google shouldn't pull-back from using Java (or Kotlin). Rust could be an option but that would certainly degrade Android's developer experience.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

Worth pointing out that at the time Google first launched Chrome the business case didn't seem clear. The product itself was compelling, but it wasn't clear what Google would do with it and why. (Now we know)

throwaway4good 4y ago
Yeah and Google’s motto used to be “don’t be evil”. Now it is a bit more like “yeah we are a nasty monopoly that spies on people, watcha gonna do about it”. Times have changed but maybe the underlying factors driving the business were always the same.
hyperman1 4y ago
There was plenty of discussion on this topic at the time, and there seemed to be a rough consensus: chrome was the google vote for choosing the direction of the www. As other voters, we had internet explorer, where Microsoft basically decided to strangle the web and end evolution after it won the browser war, just to keep windows relevant. We had firefox, where mozilla is forever on life support and never very well managed. We had safari, only a valid choice in the apple world. So google's survival depended on the goodwill of an enemy actively trying to kill them, a drunk zombie, and an at best uninterested party. In this world, google brought much better security, much faster javascript execution speeds, much better rendering. All of these were building blocks for a higher level of web-based applications. I think everyone was surprised about how good chrome fulfilled its role. The desktop never got its central role back, to the point that electron a.k.a. chrome is now the dominant desktop gui paradigm for microsoft itself. Here is one random example from 2008: https://channeldailynews.com/news/the-business-case-for-googles-chrome/8152 https://channeldailynews.com/news/the-business-case-for-goog...
fidgewidge 4y ago
I think it was pretty obvious at the time. I don't recall anyone being surprised by it, except maybe how large the budget was. Google was paying for every search referral from browsers since nearly the start. If you search with their browser, they don't pay anyone else.

deaddodo 4y ago

The business case is obvious: Google has little control over Android due to historical licensing and external dependencies (Java is the big one). Building their own OS with its own user space gives them the same control Apple has over iOS. In addition, the team working on it has made the argument that there is a technical benefit and that Linux + ART has failed to scale (to their needs). You combine both of those factors and you end up with a bespoke kernel, with a home brew environment (Dart-first, with Rust as a complement) and an Android ABI abstraction or virtualization (similar to Microsoft’s approach) to run legacy software until it’s phased out.

reyqn 4y ago
Well thanks, now I'm afraid fuschia could succeed.
- ulfw 4y ago
  It's from Google, it won't. Which product from the last decade has won their respective market? Google 2000s is way different from Google 2020s.
  - rvz 4y ago
    Gmail?, G Suite?, Android?, Chrome (and the entire ecosystem around it)? Their presence in the web is so extremely entrenched, it is quite hilarious to already write them off over a obvious market correction. Google is fine. They just over hired just like the rest of the companies did. The free / cheap money era had to come to an end.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      Literally none of those successes* are from the last decade, which was GP’s point. Google’s core business appears sound (as an outsider). They’ve struggled to stamp out repeated successes (because that’s inherently hard, not because they suck). * G-suite arguably hasn’t won its category at all and Android has won in install base, but probably not in overall economic value. Gmail and Chrome have earned the hat-tip and nod-with-respect.

jeffbee 4y ago

Here you have simply assumed that the business case for Fuchsia must be externally visible to consumers. Why assume this? The overwhelming majority of Google's software runs on Google's computers and you have never seen it. Perhaps they would consider it a success even if the only role for Fuchsia is in their datacenters. There are abundant reasons why Google would want a non-Linux operating system internally.

yencabulator 4y ago
When gVisor was released to the public, my conspiracy theory was that the future of Google Container Engine was gonna be gVisor-on-Fuchsia instead of current gVisor-on-Linux. Consumers couldn't tell the difference, gVisor is the one implementing the user-visible "Linux" on both. (What's visible of Fuchsia doesn't quite support running on "big computers" well enough for that to be true...)
UltraViolence 4y ago
> here are abundant reasons why Google would want a non-Linux operating system internally. You may be in the right, but I personally don't see no reason for it. Linux is the best supported operating system in the world and Google always has the option to alter the OS if need be. I do believe Fuchsia is vastly more secure and stabler than Linux, which could be a benefit, but Google isn't exactly being pilfered by miscreants on a daily basis, so that benefit is in doubt.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Google pays for hundreds of engineers working on the Linux kernel, who spend a lot of their time arguing with Linux maintainers about what should or should not be upstreamed, and painstakingly grooming their internal diffs vs upstream. You can imagine why not having to do that would be easier.
  - hulitu 4y ago
    They don't have to do this. They can maintain their own patches.

UltraViolence 4y ago

I see Fuchsia's benefit mostly in security and stability. Linux is one big blob with potentially huge security holes in it, many of which simply haven't yet been discovered (except maybe by intelligence agencies). Fuchsia's architecture is extremely resilient and secure by design and there's very little change culprits will be able to breach its security.