Head Android engineer Dave Burke sheds a little bit more light on what to expect from Google’s new operating system.
Last August we got wind of a brand new operating system in development at Google, codenamed Fuchsia. At this year’s Google I/O event in Mountain View, Android’s Dave Burke shed a little bit more light on the mysterious, upcoming platform. But only a little.
The early rumors were that Fuchsia could eventually replace Android, or Chrome OS, or both – Google hasn’t revealed much about the OS, but we do know that it’s being built from scratch for modern-day devices, and we’ve seen a sneak peek at its interface .
So what’s the story? « Fuchsia is a early-stage experimental project, » said Burke when pressed, as 9to5Google reports . « We, you know, we actually have lots of cool early projects at Google. I think what’s interesting here is it’s open source, so people can see it and comment on it. »
That’s all well and good, but what’s it actually for? Sounds like not even Google’s own team is certain at the moment. « Like lots of early stage projects it’s going to probably pivot and morph, » added Burke. There’s some really smart people on it, people we’ ve worked with who are great. »
It doesn’t sound like Android is currently under threat though, at least for the time being. Burke concluded his waffling: « And so it’s kind of exciting to see what happens. But it’s definitely a different sort of independent project to Android. And yeah, that’s basically it. »
Google must’ve had some kind of plan in mind when work on Fuchsia started, but it’s not getting revealed yet – and as you might expect from an « experimental » project, it sounds like Fuchsia’s purposes could change as the market and our devices evolve. We’ll be using Android and Chrome OS for a while yet.
