Google's Fuchsia OS-the successor to Android and Chrome

Google's Fuchsia OS can now run Apple's Swift code

Could it be preparing one OS to rule them all?

Back to the Fuchsia

• 
• Chris Merriman
• @ChrisTheDJ
• 22 November 2017

• Tweet 
• Facebook 
• Google plus 
•  
•  
• Send to 

0 Comments

WHAT IS FUCHSIA OS? Noone truly knows what it's for yet, but it seems to be heading towards being the successor to Android and Chrome - one ring to bind them etc etc.

But Google's new operating system has a new trick up its sleeve. It will also run code made in Swift, Apple's programming language. If that's the case, although we won't necessarily be able to get iOS apps running on Android natively, it will be a heck of a lot easier to port them.

Google is planning to contribute its own code to the main swift fork, so its activity will benefit both sides of the mobile OS divide.

Fuchsia OS already supports C and C++, Dart, Go, Rust and Python. That makes us think it's going to be the next generation that will unify its existing efforts, and not before time.

Whether it'll be an all-out replacement or if it'll be a method of making it easy to develop across Android, Chrome and even iOS, remains to be seen. That was hinted at in the fabled Andromeda OS that Google was said to be working on but which never materialised (in fact Fuchsia and Andromeda may be one and the same).

Google is in an awkward situation. Both Android and Chrome have proved hugely successful but are growing apart rather than together. Although there is Android runtime on many Chromebooks now, many users have complained about how it has been integrated as ineffectual.

Meanwhile attempts to make Android desktop machines have had varying degrees of success, with Remix OS, seen by many as the big third-party hope for Android beyond tablet sizes opting to leave the consumer-facing market, while Google's own efforts have been greeted by mixed results.

Microsoft has suffered similar problems. It now is able to support Swift in its Universal Windows Platform, and indeed Candy Crush Saga for Windows is a port from iOS. But Android integration has defeated it and so hopes of running Android apps natively on Windows have been scuppered again. It's just possible that Fuschia might bring that possibility back from the dead too - and though it's too late for Windows Mobile, it could be a huge boon for the Windows-Android Chest Burster apps. µ