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Project 'Fuchsia': Google is Quietly Working on a Successor To Android (bloomberg.com)
A day after the European Commission fined Google over Android, more details about Fuchsia, a new operating system the company has been working on for several years has emerged. From the report: But members of the Fuchsia team have discussed a grander plan that is being reported here for the first time: Creating a single operating system capable of running all the company's in-house gadgets, like Pixel phones and smart speakers, as well as third-party devices that now rely on Android and another system called Chrome OS, according to people familiar with the conversations. According to one of the people, engineers have said they want to embed Fuchsia on connected home devices, such as voice-controlled speakers, within three years, then move on to larger machines such as laptops. Ultimately the team aspires to swap in their system for Android, the software that powers more than three quarters of the world's smartphones, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. The aim is for this to happen in the next half decade, one person said.
But Pichai and Hiroshi Lockheimer, his deputy who runs Android and Chrome, have yet to sign off on any road map for Fuchsia, these people said. The executives have to move gingerly on any plan to overhaul Android because the software supports dozens of hardware partners, thousands of developers -- and billions of mobile-ad dollars. [...] Still, Fuchsia is more than a basement skunkworks effort. Pichai has voiced his support for the project internally, said people familiar with the effort. Fuchsia now has more than 100 people working on it, including venerated software staff such as Matias Duarte, a design executive who led several pioneering projects at Google and elsewhere. Duarte is only working part-time on the project, said one person familiar with the company.
But Pichai and Hiroshi Lockheimer, his deputy who runs Android and Chrome, have yet to sign off on any road map for Fuchsia, these people said. The executives have to move gingerly on any plan to overhaul Android because the software supports dozens of hardware partners, thousands of developers -- and billions of mobile-ad dollars. [...] Still, Fuchsia is more than a basement skunkworks effort. Pichai has voiced his support for the project internally, said people familiar with the effort. Fuchsia now has more than 100 people working on it, including venerated software staff such as Matias Duarte, a design executive who led several pioneering projects at Google and elsewhere. Duarte is only working part-time on the project, said one person familiar with the company.
It's 100% Java based. It runs a Java VM, running a Java VM, inside a Java VM, running on a Java VM.
it has 8 layers of indirection, each layer runs inside it's own core, which runs on a cpu optimized for java.
everything is written in java, from the hardware on up.
more indirection == more speed, and more security.
Once the phone boots, it can never be shutdown. When assembly of the phone is complete, the phones are booted, so when they get of the container ship, they have finished booting.
If the battery dies, you get a new phone, which will be pre-activated and pre-booted.
There is no local storage, everything is in the cloud.
There is no root access, everything is in 7 layers of sandboxes.
this will be the golden age of technology.
And like every attempt to reinvent the wheel with yet another micro-kernel it will be a total failure. They think by narrowing it down it will be easier to support but they will have to scale it up from phones to laptops to desktops and in doing so they will need to reinvent everything that Linux has already done.
Linux is where Google should be investing their dollars because they get more bang for their buck if they actually try to get their changes into the vanilla kernel. Googles always had a NIH syndrome. They are constantly reinventing the wheel and doing the same programming over and over again.