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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

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.
      - mschuster91 4y ago
        > They’ve struggled to stamp out repeated successes (because that’s inherently hard, not because they suck). Partially it is also because Google has a nasty reputation by now for closing down services with bare minimum notice, despite many millions still using them (RIP Google Reader), or for barely keeping them on life support (Gmail). Stadia was the most recent victim of that - consumers didn't want to invest actual money into something Google made no public commitment to keep it running for years, and where there are no consumers the game developers didn't want to invest money into porting either.
        sumtechguy 4y ago
        The other prob is the size of the company. If say a couple of dudes make a 10 million dollar steady business. It changes their lives. A 10 million dollar steady project in a company the size of google will probably get killed. It does not 'move the needle'. They probably can produce hundreds of small applications that are cool and slightly profitable. They even try it. But if those products do not 'hockey stick' forget it. Then also your point people stopped trusting them to long term support 'new' things. Also getting support out of them if you are using some of their products seems to be awful. That reflects badly even on products where they do give decent service as they now have a reputation for that.
        ravenstine 4y ago
        Stadia was a stupid idea in the first place that was going to be fraught with problems, and The Google may have thought those problems could be overcome with their incredible genius or their customers' brand loyalty. Why buy a new gaming system selling itself on a technology (cloud gaming) that the player has no reason to care about and will inevitably cause problems that won't happen with locally installed games? Cloud gaming thinks it solves a problem that players never had; storage today is plentiful and affordable. Enough gamers simply knew that the proposition The Google was making would be a road to hell and wasn't appealing regardless. This is an example of how The Google keeps shooting itself in the foot. In terms of aesthetics, they mostly know what they are doing, but they are terrible at selling things and believing in their own products. If they don't believe in their own products and are so quick to give up on ideas, why should I believe in their products? In contrast, if Apple does something, you know they'll stick with it for more than a few weeks. If Apple decided to get more competitive in the gaming space, I actually think they could do quite well because nobody thinks they're going to be swindled by them.
  - ravenstine 4y ago
    I wonder how The Google will fare in the future when millennials (and even Gen Z to an extent) become far less relevant. Call it a hunch, but much of their success outside of their technical achievements comes from their identity from the 2000s. People who were around in the early Web still see The Google as representing both excellence and defiance against the tech establishment. After all, "don't be evil, maaaaan." The Google can basically just ride upon their prior success because of their size and the number of relevant consumers who grew up with them. Come the time millennials reach retirement age, they're going to seem to younger generations like Sears did to mine; they'll be seen as an old-people thing that's too big to fail but totally uncool and obsolete. In the tech world, they'll be seen exactly as Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM are today. On a related note, The Google will face more trouble as their Search and YouTube products become less useful and relevant. Many people, namely those around in Web 1.0, still insist on using The Google, but even they will be using it far less often the more that the Web just fills itself with trash content from bots and the more that Search hawks lame shit over actual results. The more that YouTube transforms itself into cable TV, the more it's going to set itself up to not make it into the next paradigm. Say what you want about TikTok, and I'm certainly not a fan, but I think TikTok has proven that YouTube will soon be viewed as missing-link media.
    - selfhoster11 4y ago
      If the future of video publishing is TikTok, then I don’t see myself consuming much video content in the future.
  - dmonitor 4y ago
    I think the Chromecast has "won" its market, right?
    - vageli 4y ago
      There's roku, apple tv, and firestick in this market, not to mention the proliferation of smart features embedded into TVs. I wouldn't say chromecast is a clear winner there.
  - gman83 4y ago
    Google Photos?
throwaway4good 4y ago
Google is in full control of android. Android open source is much more about making it hard for new competitors to emerge (as they would have to compete with something that is free). Fuchsia has similar open source components. From a consumer (and therefore business) perspective Android is useless without Google mobile services. Just witness what happened Huawei to phone sales when they were forced over to Android open source on nearly perfect hardware.
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  What happened?
  - selfhoster11 4y ago
    Loss of access to the Play Store, meaning a loss of compatibility with the vast majority of the applications out there.
netheril96 4y ago
> due to historical licensing and external dependencies (Java is the big one). If this is a big reason, then a big reason is eliminated since Google has won the lawsuit against Oracle and have moved to OpenJDK so the licensing concerns are moot.
smallerfish 4y ago
> (Java is the big one) Fuchsia is orthogonal to Java. They could switch the runtime to anything they wanted without going down to the OS if that was the priority.
adql 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 If that was the goal they don't need to make new kernel to make new userspace. They can just make new userspace, like they did when they created the android in the first place.

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.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      > They’ve struggled to stamp out repeated successes (because that’s inherently hard, not because they suck). Partially it is also because Google has a nasty reputation by now for closing down services with bare minimum notice, despite many millions still using them (RIP Google Reader), or for barely keeping them on life support (Gmail). Stadia was the most recent victim of that - consumers didn't want to invest actual money into something Google made no public commitment to keep it running for years, and where there are no consumers the game developers didn't want to invest money into porting either.
      - sumtechguy 4y ago
        The other prob is the size of the company. If say a couple of dudes make a 10 million dollar steady business. It changes their lives. A 10 million dollar steady project in a company the size of google will probably get killed. It does not 'move the needle'. They probably can produce hundreds of small applications that are cool and slightly profitable. They even try it. But if those products do not 'hockey stick' forget it. Then also your point people stopped trusting them to long term support 'new' things. Also getting support out of them if you are using some of their products seems to be awful. That reflects badly even on products where they do give decent service as they now have a reputation for that.
      - ravenstine 4y ago
        Stadia was a stupid idea in the first place that was going to be fraught with problems, and The Google may have thought those problems could be overcome with their incredible genius or their customers' brand loyalty. Why buy a new gaming system selling itself on a technology (cloud gaming) that the player has no reason to care about and will inevitably cause problems that won't happen with locally installed games? Cloud gaming thinks it solves a problem that players never had; storage today is plentiful and affordable. Enough gamers simply knew that the proposition The Google was making would be a road to hell and wasn't appealing regardless. This is an example of how The Google keeps shooting itself in the foot. In terms of aesthetics, they mostly know what they are doing, but they are terrible at selling things and believing in their own products. If they don't believe in their own products and are so quick to give up on ideas, why should I believe in their products? In contrast, if Apple does something, you know they'll stick with it for more than a few weeks. If Apple decided to get more competitive in the gaming space, I actually think they could do quite well because nobody thinks they're going to be swindled by them.
- ravenstine 4y ago
  I wonder how The Google will fare in the future when millennials (and even Gen Z to an extent) become far less relevant. Call it a hunch, but much of their success outside of their technical achievements comes from their identity from the 2000s. People who were around in the early Web still see The Google as representing both excellence and defiance against the tech establishment. After all, "don't be evil, maaaaan." The Google can basically just ride upon their prior success because of their size and the number of relevant consumers who grew up with them. Come the time millennials reach retirement age, they're going to seem to younger generations like Sears did to mine; they'll be seen as an old-people thing that's too big to fail but totally uncool and obsolete. In the tech world, they'll be seen exactly as Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM are today. On a related note, The Google will face more trouble as their Search and YouTube products become less useful and relevant. Many people, namely those around in Web 1.0, still insist on using The Google, but even they will be using it far less often the more that the Web just fills itself with trash content from bots and the more that Search hawks lame shit over actual results. The more that YouTube transforms itself into cable TV, the more it's going to set itself up to not make it into the next paradigm. Say what you want about TikTok, and I'm certainly not a fan, but I think TikTok has proven that YouTube will soon be viewed as missing-link media.
  - selfhoster11 4y ago
    If the future of video publishing is TikTok, then I don’t see myself consuming much video content in the future.
- dmonitor 4y ago
  I think the Chromecast has "won" its market, right?
  - vageli 4y ago
    There's roku, apple tv, and firestick in this market, not to mention the proliferation of smart features embedded into TVs. I wouldn't say chromecast is a clear winner there.
- gman83 4y ago
  Google Photos?

throwaway4good 4y ago

Google is in full control of android. Android open source is much more about making it hard for new competitors to emerge (as they would have to compete with something that is free). Fuchsia has similar open source components. From a consumer (and therefore business) perspective Android is useless without Google mobile services. Just witness what happened Huawei to phone sales when they were forced over to Android open source on nearly perfect hardware.

theGnuMe 4y ago
What happened?
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  Loss of access to the Play Store, meaning a loss of compatibility with the vast majority of the applications out there.

netheril96 4y ago

> due to historical licensing and external dependencies (Java is the big one). If this is a big reason, then a big reason is eliminated since Google has won the lawsuit against Oracle and have moved to OpenJDK so the licensing concerns are moot.

smallerfish 4y ago

> (Java is the big one) Fuchsia is orthogonal to Java. They could switch the runtime to anything they wanted without going down to the OS if that was the priority.

adql 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 If that was the goal they don't need to make new kernel to make new userspace. They can just make new userspace, like they did when they created the android in the first place.