Last August we got wind of a brand new operating system in development at Google, codenamed Fuchsia. At this week's Google IO 2017 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."
Pivot and morph
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.
