I see people comparing it to Chrome but the business case for Chrome is massive; protecting Google’s search and advertisement surveillance monopoly by avoiding to have to pay Apple and others big bucks to have Google as default search engine.
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.
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.
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.
Google 2000s is way different from Google 2020s.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Actually I think cloud gaming has its advantages - you don't have to worry about upgrading a computer all the time to keep up with new developments, to keep it running and patched, some online trolls gaining RCE on your machine (yes, that happens, remember Minecraft and log4j!), giving kernel-level access to crappy anti-cheat software or about the power and heat. And when a new game comes out, you don't have to deal with downloading dozens of gigabytes on day 1 and another dozen gigabytes in patches in the following weeks. Just go online and play.
And if you want to go on vacation or on other travel, you don't need to haul around a thousand dollar worth PC or laptop, you only need your Chromecast.
Stadia reminds me of the time Homer Simpson designed a car. Just because an idea sounds ingenious doesn't mean it will result in an ingenious product. Actually, Stadia is a lot like Homer's car. Instead of Homer, the reigns were seemingly handed to engineer-types living in the Silicon Valley bubble who thought it'd be cool to play games over VNC (an oversimplification, yes). The product should never have seen the light of day and, when unveiled, everyone who saw it knew it was doomed.
In reality, most people just don't care about downloading game updates, regardless of how unreasonably gargantuan they can be. It's arguably a good thing that people have to take some break from gaming. Regardless, there's no evidence that downloading updates is preventing any meaningful number of users from spending more money on gaming. Anti-cheat software sucks, but again, it's not much of a roadblock for most gamers if at all.
The disadvantages outweigh the benefits. Input lag is frustrating, even if it happens occasionally, and is borderline unacceptable when playing online multiplayer games. Lose access to internet? Just go read a book, kid!
At best, Stadia might have been a niche product for the minority who would want it. Not in a million years would I have wanted a Stadia.
To compete in the highly competitive sphere of gaming, Stadia needed more of a value proposition than being able to play games instantly without downloading updates.
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.
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.
(What's visible of Fuchsia doesn't quite support running on "big computers" well enough for that to be true...)
You may be in the right, but I personally don't see no reason for it. Linux is the best supported operating system in the world and Google always has the option to alter the OS if need be.
I do believe Fuchsia is vastly more secure and stabler than Linux, which could be a benefit, but Google isn't exactly being pilfered by miscreants on a daily basis, so that benefit is in doubt.
IMHO Google shouldn't pull-back from using Java (or Kotlin). Rust could be an option but that would certainly degrade Android's developer experience.
(especially where "the only thing left" is more than the sum of the rest put together)
replacing the GNU userland reduces legal risk and increases operational flexibility significantly due to GPL3's tivoisation/patent clauses
however the kernel isn't GPL3 (and never will be)
As other voters, we had internet explorer, where Microsoft basically decided to strangle the web and end evolution after it won the browser war, just to keep windows relevant. We had firefox, where mozilla is forever on life support and never very well managed. We had safari, only a valid choice in the apple world. So google's survival depended on the goodwill of an enemy actively trying to kill them, a drunk zombie, and an at best uninterested party.
In this world, google brought much better security, much faster javascript execution speeds, much better rendering. All of these were building blocks for a higher level of web-based applications.
I think everyone was surprised about how good chrome fulfilled its role. The desktop never got its central role back, to the point that electron a.k.a. chrome is now the dominant desktop gui paradigm for microsoft itself.
Here is one random example from 2008: https://channeldailynews.com/news/the-business-case-for-goog...
Times have changed but maybe the underlying factors driving the business were always the same.
Fuchsia's architecture is extremely resilient and secure by design and there's very little change culprits will be able to breach its security.