Project 'Fuchsia': Google is Quietly Working on a Successor To Android (bloomberg.com) 122
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.
Linux security concerns? (Score:1)
Either that's the reason for the switch or to get out of GPL constraints.
It's politics (Score:4, Insightful)
There are no practical Linux kernel security concerns that wouldn't also apply to something like Fuchsia. Any complex OS written by a small team will potentially have as many if not more security issues as Linux.
Advantages of the Linux kernel is a lot of eyeballs, mature codebase, reasonably good architectures, very wide hardware support, and known to scale up to very large systems.
Disadvantages of Linux is GPL and dealing with a large community of opinionated people. It can be difficult to get big architectural changes in unless a lot of time is spent convincing the top people on LKML.
Fuchsia is probably a better choice than forking Linux. It's smaller and does less so it will be easier to manage by a small team.
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A microkernel OS written by a multi-billion company will potentially have more security issues as monolithic and bloated Linux, considering that Linux kernel (except for Google and Red) has no QA and regression testing?
Yeah, top 50 p [cvedetails.com]
Re: It's politics (Score:1)
You've heard of Windows, right? Not micro kernel but what difference does that make?
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Re: It's politics (Score:3)
You heretic! Linux has no bugs thanks to the magic eyeballs!
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A microkernel OS written by a multi-billion company will potentially have more security issues as monolithic and bloated Linux, considering that Linux kernel (except for Google and Red) has no QA and regression testing?
As someone who has worked for a multi-billion dollar company on a microkernel the answer is Yes.
Also it's not strictly true that Linux has no QA and no regression testing, it's just not centralized and the level of testing between kernel components is not standardized. But I get your point.
Yeah, top 50 products with security vulnerabilities [cvedetails.com] Linux kernel alone having the most bugs.
It's been my experience that vulns are not disclosed when there is a company in charge that can pay a bounty. Having personally fixed serious issues in services on QNX and VxWorks I don't think they are immune to security
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Linux kernel 4.17.7(!) is broken on 32-bit x86 [lwn.net] and even this doesn't stop Greg KH from spitting the usual nonsense, "All users of the 4.17 kernel series must upgrade".
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That sort of nonsense is hardly unique to the open source world. You can find annoying examples of throwing users under the bus from Apple, glibc project, and more.
But I'd like to note you overlooked my statement about de-centralization. I do regression tests on Linux every single commit as part of my job. As do many other companies. Unfortunately we don't really share our test infrastructure with the open source community, they end up having to make due with what resources they can muster on their own.
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QA is done differently than "someone testing his code". This is not a true QA.
Without diving too deeply down the no true scotsman fallacy, there are many different and industry accepted ways to approach software testing.
At my company both white box and black box is done methodically. Test plans can be written by specialists known as QA engineers, but developers are also responsible for specifying test plans based on SW architecture, requirements, and any industry standards we are required to meet.
Many shops use QA staff for running ad hoc testing and to do test regressions. Where I w
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Biggest advantage for linux is that as a dev you can actually submit your changes to them and have them included.
There is no such process with Android.
For example their build system being broken for no reason on various versions of linux.
I have the patch. But where do I send it? Nowhere, that's where.
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I've not had any trouble submitting Android patches. But I also don't have problems with the build system, I always use it from within a chroot. Trying to support the hundred or so distros out there is not worth anyone's time.
Re:It's politics (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Scaling phones up to tablets then to laptops is the story of Android as well. 10 years ago it was a light-weight OS for small touch displays. It struggled to do things like multiple windows, multiple displays, and keyboards that have been common on Linux desktops (X11). Feels like they're trying to repeat history.
They are constantly reinventing the wheel and doing the same programming over and over again.
Well it is a lot more fun to make stuff from scratch.
Re: It's politics (Score:1)
There's no politics involved, but only licenses and market lock.
They could've gone with some other kernel, leaner and with a more permissive license so they don't have to deal will steering committees and mailing lists.
Any *BSD would be great but they chose not to do it.
Google wants 2 things.
1st total control over the code.
They are going to release a 20k or 40k loc microkernel as foss, just for the sake of saying we support foss, they have a nongpl license which means they can add whatever they want inside
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Also, there's disparity of hardware. It's possible that Fuchsia will run on a single architecture, with well-defined specs. In that case, a lot of software and sources of bugs, can be avoided.
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Fuchsia already runs on 3 CPU architectures that I know of. Maybe only one of those is POR, but you can grab their tree and play with it today if you want.
Wow (Score:1)
I never knew about this project several years ago
Fuchsia (Score:1)
Re:Fuchsia (Score:4, Informative)
It is known that it is not based on Linux. It uses a microkernel called Zircon.
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It is known that it is not based on Linux. It uses a microkernel called Zircon.
The real shame is that they discontinued to project that the Zircon microkernel was being used for, a great roboassistant called Mr. Zirkon. [tumblr.com]
He had great features like:
* Voice interface
* Internal power source
* 100% homicidal
Frankly, I don't understand why they discontinued the project!
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Fuchsia appears to be under a more permissive license, so it cannot be based on Linux as the GPL wouldn't allow it.
Fuchsia is a replacement for Linux (Score:4, Informative)
As both Android and Chrome are only hosted on Linux both could replace Linux with Fuchsia when the later gains sufficient functionality. 3/4 of Android developers would neither notice nor care. Of the remaining 1/4 some percentage is only using Posix and not anything uniquely Linux based, so **if** Fuchsia provides Posix support they will not care are either.
Re:Fuchsia is a replacement for Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct, Fuchsia is a kernel. Practically every modern phone has a copy of its predecessor - because it's already in the Android source tree. Android BSP developers know it as "LK" (little kernel) which is used to host the Fastboot bootloader application (the one that draws the screen that lets you select if you want to enter recovery mode, upgrade a package, or other thing. ClockWorkMod and others often install replacement bootloaders based on LK as well).
Fuchsia simply aims to add in the bits that LK is missing to become a proper full function kernel.
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Correct, Fuchsia is a kernel.
Not quite.
Technically Zircon is Fuchsia's kernel.
https://github.com/littlekerne... [github.com]
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This is completely inaccurate. Fuchsia is a new kernel, a micro-kernel to be exact, developed by Google because they always have to reinvent the wheel every time they develop anything because the average age of their developers is 24 and they don't have the wisdom to stop re-inventing the wheel.
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No, Zircon is the kernel, Fucshia is the OS. They will absolutely be cribbing from Linux, as much as they need and can get away with.
This entire movie is in response to the GPL and Oracle.
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Fuchsia is meant to be POSIX compatible (at least to the extent which allows to compile and run the source code meant for Linux/*BSD without any modifications). The POSIX standard is quite huge and heavy but it's not necessary to fully implement it to be able to run most of the existing code.
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Fuchsia is a replacement for Linux.
In short, Google aspires to be the new Microsoft, including the full evil part. You should worried about your private data, very worried.
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Fuchsia is a replacement for Linux.
In short, Google aspires to be the new Microsoft, including the full evil part. You should worried about your private data, very worried.
The Linux kernel hosting Android or ChromOS adds **zero** protection for your private data. Its replacement changes nothing in this regard.
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Fuchsia is a replacement for Linux.
In short, Google aspires to be the new Microsoft, including the full evil part. You should worried about your private data, very worried.
The Linux kernel hosting Android or ChromOS adds **zero** protection for your private data. Its replacement changes nothing in this regard.
It is not about security though I do seriously doubt Google's ability to secure a complex system as well as the Linux community does. The GPL copyright license provides at least some check on Google's abuse of its market power. Lose that and Google's descent to full evil will greatly accelerate, including abusing your private data in any way that suits it. Be worried, and don't continue in your clueless daze. This agenda is not exactly subtle.
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It is not about security though I do seriously doubt Google's ability to secure a complex system as well as the Linux community does.
Google contributes and signs off on Linux kernel patches. Google is a major part of the Linux community.
The GPL copyright license provides at least some check on Google's abuse of its market power.
Fuchsia is open source. The GPL adds nothing in this case.
Again, that takes place at the applications level, not the OS level, not the kernel level, and Linux provides no barrier whatsoever in Android or ChromeOS today.
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It is not about security though I do seriously doubt Google's ability to secure a complex system as well as the Linux community does.
Google contributes and signs off on Linux kernel patches. Google is a major part of the Linux community.
Google contributes 1/3rd the changes vs Intel, 1/2 of Red Hat, and less that Suse even, a miniscule company by comparison. I say, not pulling their weight.
The GPL copyright license provides at least some check on Google's abuse of its market power.
Fuchsia is open source. The GPL adds nothing in this case.
Just shows the depth of your ignorance. Android is "visible source". You can see it, but Google does not give a shit if you want to change it. Google does not give a shit about what Android users want from it, only about monetizing their eyeballs. Fuschia will be like that. A huge step down from the vibrant and inclusive Linux kernel community.
Again, that takes place at the applications level, not the OS level, not the kernel level, and Linux provides no barrier whatsoever in Android or ChromeOS today.
The kernel is part of every application.
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They claim it's not. Of course it is. They may be avoiding copying chunks of code directly or avoiding copying functionality too closely. But they're copying as much as they need and can get away with. And why wouldn't they? The entire industry is built upon copying code and ideas from others. Fuchsia is simply a response to the GPL and Oracle's lawsuit. It serves no practical purpose that a fork of Linux wouldn't be able to provide.
But hey - people were dumb/eager enough to believe Compaq developed
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so a single os will fix all these issues,... i'll smoke what you are smoking.
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That's what Google wants, but that's also exactly what the EU is fining them for. What the EU wants is Google to be forced to sell devices completely divested from Google's other products. A closed source OS that was forced to use Google services would still violate this, and would probably incur an even larger fine since as things currently stand you're still allowed to find alternatives. Further, it's possible that creating a closed source OS that forced the use of Google's services would bring back the 9
EU ruling will speed up fining Apple. (Score:1)
Under your logic Apple could be fined as well for the same reasons. Right down to the proprietary parts.
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If enough people could stomach iOS for it to be popular enough to have a larger marketshare, what makes you think they wouldn't fine Apple?
Apple has a two-pronged defense:
1) their mobile products are all shit.
2) people don't have legacy constraints that keep them using Apple even when they fucking hate it (this is how Microsoft's share got so large in the '90s).
If they ever drop either of these defenses, they'll gain marketshare and hell yes, the EU will slap 'em for all the anti-competitive behavior. T
Re: EU ruling will speed up fining Apple. (Score:3)
What makes them shit? The fact that they get regular updates for many years or the fact that Apple doesn't spy on you anything like as much as Google. In any case did you miss this https://www.theverge.com/2018/... [theverge.com]
Re: EU ruling will speed up fining Apple. (Score:2)
Define "anything". I can browse the net, send emails and messages, play games, order a cab, take photos. I guess your definition on "anything" is opening a bash shell or some such but I have multiple computers for that.
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I'm actually completely surprised that both Google AND Apple haven't yet been sued for anti-competitive things in their mobile devices: Google for the tight bundling of the Google Play Services and Apple for preventing competing products appearing on the App Store.
The only thing I can figure is that nobody has been willing to take the L in the court of public opinion, Google and Apple have fanatical users. I'm wondering if the recent push toward privacy and the backlash Facebook and Google get for their hoo
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I'm actually completely surprised that both Google AND Apple haven't yet been sued for anti-competitive things in their mobile devices: Google for the tight bundling of the Google Play Services and Apple for preventing competing products appearing on the App Store.
That's just a tiny tip of the iceberg of market control abuse that forms the basic business plans of Google, Apple and Microsoft (the latter only for PCs now, thanks for small mercies). If I had to pick one problem that is worse than all the others, it is contractual control of OEMs. That is, Google tells android vendors what they can and can't do if they want to call their phones "Android". This is, in a word, criminal.
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hey picahu, nobody needs you (Score:1)
good luck with that, its like no one has ever tried to do this before and come to realize that different products/use cases have different requirements.
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It's like they looked long and hard at Android, found the part that sucked least then decided to reimplement that.
On the other hand they barely use Linux anyway, preferring instead to reimplement everything poorly three or four times before they reach marginal utility. Yay API churn!
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Will it isolate the users from their hardware even more?
Yes. And will enable Google to grow even more arrogant that it already is.
From EU perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether they call it Android / ChromeOS / Fuchsia or how it works generally doesn't matter.
But if their product is the most widely used (they have a monopoly), they can't force and stipulate anti-trust / anti-competent behaviour over OEMs (handset manufacturers) - just like Microsoft used to do.
Namely,
1. if the OEM wants access to app store, they can't force them to also bundle other Google apps exclusively;
2. they shouldn't bribe network operators and OEMs to install Google apps exclusively;
3. if a handset manufacturer wants to ship a custom Android build, Google shouldn't threaten them from denying access to the app store market, or to any other Google apps.
I would have thoughts nerds would be pretty happy about this, as it means more competition and a more open and free market place, such that others have a chance to create competing apps and services.
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It might be a win against monopoly, but it's still a loss for consumers.
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Re: From EU perspective (Score:2)
So let's not do anything to Google because Microsoft suck. Great plan.
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Re:From EU perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Google provides AOSP without restrictions. You do not have to bundle Google's app store with AOSP
AOSP is dead. You literally cannot build anything useful with it. Pretty much any hardware post 2011 requires binary blobs with commercial fees to make AOSP even bootable. You can literally ask anyone who has done core Android development this, AOSP is dead.
you do not need to license the Play Store.
Play store isn't what this is about. Google Play Services. Long story, short: Everything useful for a functioning phone is in Google Play Services. Slightly longer version: Yes you can call down to do things, but the c libs that handle that in AOSP is literally written to make doing so a lesson in how painful you can make an API. Additionally, much like systemd developers, any interface you use in code is subject to inevitable change or complete abandonment in the next patch. Quite literally you could build an app that calls the C for GPS and in three months, they'll change the interface to something completely different with matching confusing name and your app just gets to segfault. This is why Google always threw a fit when device makers wouldn't update their image, which they fixed with Google Play Services. Addendum: If you've built an app using Android Studio recently, you most likely are making a call to Google Play Services. They've literally made the toolchain to force your app into their ecosystem.
Microsoft even has an app called Bing that, when installed on Android, replaces the Google search infrastructure completely.
No, that's totally not how it works. It intercepts the call but ultimately Google's callback has to be fulfilled or else it cancels the request for hardware access. So while yes, Bing is fulfilling the request, Google has to know about it too "for security purposes". So yeah, when you use Bing, you're just using Bing and Google. You literally cannot opt-out without recompiling your image.
it easier to access the same website all useful mobile phones would default to anyway because they already have a monopoly there
No one is disputing the search giant's monopoly on the web. What they are disputing is that Google has moved all of the previous functionality of their OS into a closed off and highly regulated set of libraries. And they did that to tighten control over their OS. Now if Google made the OS and made the hardware and they were the only ones in town selling Android, who cares? But Google is literally fucking with third parties here. That's the deal here. Apple sells their phones direct to the public, so if they make a change and people hate it, their voting dollars moving away directly affect them, Apple. Now if Google makes a change and people hate it, the public voting dollars indirectly affect Google, but directly messes with the profits of other companies. That's where the anti-competitive nature comes into play. Google knows that if a vendor doesn't agree with them, they can literally twist the API enough to screw the vendor over. It's not like the vendor can sit there and redo an entire access API between releases. Now had Google done that from start, then we'd be in a different story and I'd just say, well they got what they deserve. But no, Google has slowly killed off "open" and "free" Android and did so when vendors were too deep to escape.
Now here's the argument point and this is the thing you know we could debate and I don't think we'd ever come to a "correct" answer on. Google says that they've done this, that they've become this way, to prevent fragmentation. I don't buy that excuse because they knew that fragmentation is the name of the FOSS game. So it's an open debate if preventing fragmentation = being an evil monopolistic company (which it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that I feel Google is pure evil now.) But do not, do not for one moment think that AOSP is some s
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Very insightful reply, thank you!
Particularly this paragraph...
No one is disputing the search giant's monopoly on the web. What they are disputing is that Google has moved all of the previous functionality of their OS into a closed off and highly regulated set of libraries. And they did that to tighten control over their OS. Now if Google made the OS and made the hardware and they were the only ones in town selling Android, who cares? But Google is literally fucking with third parties here. That's the deal here. Apple sells their phones direct to the public, so if they make a change and people hate it, their voting dollars moving away directly affect them, Apple. Now if Google makes a change and people hate it, the public voting dollars indirectly affect Google, but directly messes with the profits of other companies. That's where the anti-competitive nature comes into play. Google knows that if a vendor doesn't agree with them, they can literally twist the API enough to screw the vendor over. It's not like the vendor can sit there and redo an entire access API between releases. Now had Google done that from start, then we'd be in a different story and I'd just say, well they got what they deserve. But no, Google has slowly killed off "open" and "free" Android and did so when vendors were too deep to escape.
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Nice exercise in whataboutism. Both Google and Microsoft are corrupt criminal racketeers, the gap has been closing between them ever since Google went IPO (or arguably before that). Let's not niggle over which is worse, they both need attitude readustment.
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From EU perspective
Nobody thinks that the underlying OS has any relevance to business decisions about bundling software.
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Apple effectively does all of these things and monopolizes on the order of 87% of the industry's profit [investors.com].
The EU has attacked the little guy struggling to solidify an identity that can rise from the industry's gutters where even a few dollars of extra cost could kill a phone to compete. Without a solid identity, Android doesn't stand a chance to ever balance the profit equation and profit is all that matters to investors. Apple is laughing its way to the bank at this decision.
I personally think Fuchsia will n
Re: From EU perspective (Score:2)
https://www.theverge.com/2018/... [theverge.com]
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Apple could easily blow this out of the water by reducing their app store commission to one that provably covers cost of managing the app store only. The app store is not a significant source of Apple profit. The greater than 50% profit per phone sold is where most of Apple's profits come from.
They would do this because they can not give up their silo. The security and control over the experience that the silo provides is the source of their profit per phone sold. Without it, people wouldn't want to buy iPh
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I wonder, which arrogant Googler with mod points[1] modded your post "offtopic"?
[1] Mod points awarded because of reading/posting Slashdot regularly instead of working, which tenured Googlers really hate.
Focusing on itmems that are inconsequential, why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Creating a single operating system capable of running all the company's in-house gadgets...
Google are doing this even though they've [miserably] failed to create a single unified messaging application!
How about Gmail, that continues to suck big time?
Privacy? (Score:2, Insightful)
They have to start again from the ground up to truly siphon every possible scrap of personal inormation.
More details? (Score:4, Interesting)
I read the article, and an awful lot of the paragraphs are like "Fuchsia could ..." and "There are some signs ..." etc. I guess it's interesting to know how many people are working on it, that was the main actual "detail" I got from the article, most of the rest was just more speculation.
Java Based (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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This is Google... They would use Angular, but not Angularjs.
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That's all? Count me in! That's about 500% cleaner than it is today!
Try it (Score:2)
They had to, so they could start naming after colors, given the lukewarm reception to Android release Stinkweed-N-Grasshopper Donut.
Fushia, fuschia, fuscia.... (Score:2)
Oh, fuck sia.
Step one will be: have everyone involved learn to spell that word correctly, because currently, no one does [xkcd.com]
with apologies to Monty Python (Score:2)
half decade (Score:2)
The aim is for this to happen in the next half decade, one person said.
WTF is wrong with you? Why can't you say 5 years?
Unless it runs Android apps, it's DOA (Score:2)
NOBODY is going to rewrite their apps for this new OS.
They were reluctant for BB10 and Windows phone OS 7(?) back when market shares were up in the air.
Now there are 2 phone OS markets. That's it!
Further Evilication of Google (Score:4, Interesting)
Google used to be a company that embrassed free software. As employees have leaked they are now more obsessed than ever about competitors not just developing interesting things and then see if they sell. Maybe this was inevitable.
Android is already not free just releases tossed over the wall from Google. There is no way I can be part of Android development. Fuchsia just allows total lock down of the last open piece the kernel. Therefore better control. Some even say it will only allow network booting with caching on device, so really locked down.
Most of Android nastiness aren't the kernel's fault, e.g bloat, upgrade issues...
Even with Google's resources they will never have as functional a kernel as Linux. The Linux kernel has things like SELinux, iptables, great filesystem support, device drivers for everything. Great for tinkerers, not so useful to Google (they will only implement the few bits they really need). There is no danger Fuchsia will get all this with basically in house not fully open development.
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The Linux kernel has things like SELinux, iptables, great filesystem support, device drivers for everything. Great for tinkerers, not so useful to Google
Android makes extensive use of selinux. If you don't want XYZ filesystem support you don't include support for that in your dist. It's not like these things are inextricably hardcoded into Linux.
And selinux isn't "great for tinkers". It's the fundamental access control system of Linux (in production devices, maybe not for desktop users).
Re: Further Evilication of Google (Score:2)
Yes but the point was it will be hard for Fuchsia to provide these functions.
Also Android is so much more useful with Linux. As in it can be deployed in embedded application, industrial applications, due to Linux having so much flexibility. That is likely impossible for Fuchsia, mainly due to not able to have the breadth of device drivers.
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it will be hard for Fuchsia to provide these functions
That is likely impossible for Fuchsia,
Google has a lot of employees and a lot of money.
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Google used to be a company that embrassed free software.
This is an awesomely relevant typo.
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Well, that would sure make the buying decision very easy.
why "replace" Android? (Score:4, Interesting)
Replacing Android would be silly. This sounds like a well-thought plan to launch a third OS into the market - one that has a better chance against iOS at the high end.
Develop a new OS, shift your devices to it starting with those furthest away from the smartphones, and when the time is right you split Android off, sell that division to a consortium of the Android device makers, and never look back. That time will likely be right before launching a new set of smartphones using whatever they decide to call Fuchsia and doing so without ever offering Fuchsia to any other company. This is why they must leave Android. They must do so to avoid breaking their own rules.
The key will be whether Fuchsia can achieve real world functional positives that can't be matched by iOS without a similar rewrite. It needs to do something like provide for a leap in power efficiency, security, memory efficiency, or AI integration.
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They absolutely are doing it for money. Apple commands 87% of the smartphone market profit share with only around 18% of sales by count. That profit pool is greater than the profit pool of Google's entire advertising business.
Because it occupies the low-end, you can't charge enough for Android to make it worthwhile on its own. Even Samsung who leads Apple in numbers sold was recently said to be making more total profit on their component sales to Apple than on their own phone sales. If they were forced to m
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Amazon quietly working on a search engine (Score:2)
Amazon quietly working on a search engine. Take that, Google assholes!
Real facts: Written in C, Former BeOS developers. (Score:1)