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Andromeda May Be Dead

By 19 Comments

mm by Robby Payne
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Early last fall, about a month out from Google’s hardware event in early October, some rumors began swirling around a unified OS Google was working on.

Andromeda

Rumors turned into psuedo-facts, code leaks, and a purposed 2016 release of a device that would drive the entire effort.

Only, none of that ever happened.

As the months wore on, the rumor mill would crank up and a few articles about the impending release of Andromeda would show up and fade away. Each time they showed up, we collectively rolled our eyes. After all, we’d written quite a bit about what we thought Andromeda could be, but we never felt it was something that would ever see the light of day.

There were simply too few clues. Too few hard facts. Too few substantiated rumors.

Andromeda’s Demise?

Today, Stephen Hall tweeted this:


Now, just as we didn’t when the pro-Andromeda rumors began, we won’t assume that this tweet is an absolute fact.

However, we may never know, either. That’s the funny thing about rumors. What the rumor started as may never make it to see the light of day. Whether it was shelved or simply never existed is – and may forever remain – a mystery.

Since Google never has to comment officially on a rumor, it is hard to know what Andromeda ever was.

When contrasted with something like Fuchsia OS, it is easy to see why we were skeptical the entire time. Fuchsia OS has big names working on it, a dedicated GIT repository, and received a little bit of fireside time at Google I/O. Though mysterious, we can see that something is brewing there.

Whether Andromeda was a code for Google’s efforts to bring Android to Chrome OS or a separate project all together, it looks like the whole thing is being cast aside.

In my opinion, as the Android on Chrome OS project began taking hold, an additional OS merge stopped making sense. Whatever Andromeda was, it looks like it may be no more.

Andromeda is (likely) dead. Long live Chrome OS.

  • RMP

    I never liked the idea of continuing development of Andromeda in parallel with ARC. That name though, Andromeda, was a flash of marketing genius. Assuming that the project truly is dead, maybe they can salvage the name and graft it onto a more worthy Android-related product.

  • scott

    There’s no shortage of derivative Linux based code constructs out here.
    I’m just glad that Chrome OS didn’t succumb to that distraction.
    We (me) are counting on them working on a cohesive and stable alternative to PC mass and Mac boutique economics.
    Me and my Chrome OS Dell 13 i5 touch are in this for the long haul.

  • johnkendrick

    Here’s hoping Google doesn’t eventually give up on Playstore on ChromeOS devices in general.

    I’m perfectly happy with ChromeOS with or without, but I believe the boost in acceptance of ChromeOS that Android apps brings outside the education market will be good for all of us.

    BTW, still loving my SCP. Tomorrow, its off to work with Caroline in tow. Not sure where that name originated, but it is the device name Pushbullet gave to my new SCP when I connected it to the service. Was that a codename or something for the SCP? J

    • CB+ was named Kevin

    • Gabriel Brangers

      Caroline is the board name of the Pro. It is a character from the game Portal. As is the baseboard which is Glados. The Plus is named Kevin. All the RockChip devices are named after Despicable Me characters.

      • johnkendrick

        Thanks Gabriel for the explanation. I had heard others refer to Kevin, but I guess I just missed the reference to Caroline. J

  • Zach Mauch

    I gladly eat crow on Andromeda as nothing materialized at Google IO. Now what I see happening is Google preparing the Android app ecosystem for a merged os somewhere down the line. It seems fuchsia is being made to replace Linux as the os core. The question of what the user facing os will eventually is still up in the air. Will Android and chrome simply continue to grow toward the same goal out will there be some greater centralized effort? Who knows. All we know is Google is committed desktop apps.

    • Agreed. It seems Google is committed to Android on Chrome OS right now. It’s been slow, but they are plugging along.

      • Zach Mauch

        I hope it was true. Not because of chrome OS, but because Android needs the consistent software and extended updates that chrome enjoys.

    • ChrisGX

      Well, the snag with the Andromeda notion wasn’t the prospect of single codebase going forward – that was and is still an attractive idea (that may eventually be made a reality if things work out with Fuchsia OS) – but rather the supposition that you could get there by forcibly “merging” Android and Chrome OS. Whatever could have come out of such a merger process would more likely have been grotesque rather than sleek. Interestingly, even as Stephen Hall maintains that Andromeda was at one time a thing he quietly admits it was never going to be a third platform. But that was essential to (and the most controversial part of) the speculative story about Andromeda. What Hall says now is, “Andromeda was absolutely real. It was Android-based and sought to bring Android to different form factors. Google was preparing hardware.” However, the admission that Andromeda was “Android based” really guts the original Andromeda rumour. The supposed third thing that pops up from combining Android and Chrome OS never was. Andromeda only ever was Android O with windows.

      • Zach Mauch

        I’m not sure how others viewed it, but I always interpreted the “merged” thing as being metaphorical not literal. I always expected it to be android based. That is why I was so excited for it. I knew that would mean the rules for android would have to be re-written and we might possibly get ChromeOS style updates and software consistency.

        • ChrisGX

          One of the reasons I have so stubbornly (and no doubt annoyingly) criticised the claims concerning Andromeda is that the originator of the story, and to this day the only person to claim the story had been based on actual statements from a “reliable source”, David Ruddock at Android Police, did indeed present things as if Andromeda was a third thing (i.e. alongside but somehow different from Android and Chrome OS, created by a fusion of both platforms, but that in time would replace both) and padding out that story made spurious connections to an earlier report from the Wall Street Journal that spoke of an impending merger of Android and Chrome OS so as to revive the technical muddle-headedness of that report in unreconstructed form. It is not, strictly speaking, okay to soften literal claims into a more metaphorical construal when it is the literal claimant who is saying that he heard everything from a reliable source. A more metaphorical construal would not be the same story as the one presented by the person who first made these claims about Andromeda!

      • MikeOnBike

        In other words, Andromeda would have been Google’s version of Remix OS?

  • otherworldly94b

    I asked the google store for some help and also asked about Andromeda and they told me to keep an eye on the store a little bit later in the year! If it’s shelved I hope it gets unshelved cause it’d be an AWESOME project if they made it happen!

  • Please write an article developing the sentence “as the Android on Chrome OS project began taking hold”.

    I don’t understand what is Google doing with the Android apps in ChromeOS. I own a Acer R11 and most of the Android apps works like a charm. PowerDirector for Android in my ChromeOS has become my video editor for my Youtube channel. And that is only one Android app I’m using in my Acer R11 on daily basis.

    Why they are not spreading the Android Apps for the rest of Chromebooks (even the new ones)? Is there a real risk of my Acer R11 stop using Android Apps?

  • ManFredMann

    It’s Andro-meta.

  • ChrisGX

    I note that the editors haven’t published anything on the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as yet. While the event appears to have been more of an extended advert for Apple products rather than a genuine conference for developers a couple of good products did, at least, trickle out. I think Apple has got iOS right (or started to get it right, perhaps), this time round. Google will need to counter the pairing of iOS 11 with the new iPad Pro, which is also a pretty good piece of hardware, as it happens. And, it is going have to counter that pairing now – not a few years from now when Fuchsia rolls out – and without Andromeda, which doesn’t exist. The only options Google can call upon are those that are already here before us i.e. either Android or Chrome OS. The alternative is to bail out of the market for advanced tablets (and large screen devices) completely. I find it hard to believe that Google will quit this market so I anticipate there will be a release of solid tablet hardware, made by Google or by one or several of its partners, this year, paired with a variant of Android O with advanced windowing or a variant of Chrome OS with some serious graphics chops.

  • tinabolina2017

    what was the difference between andromeda and fuschia? i wouold never want them to merge android and chrome . isnt android slow because its written in some form of java derivative?

    • ChrisGX

      Well, Andromeda doesn’t exist so there is a major difference. But even the idea of Andromeda was wonky. You don’t get a great OS by combining two existing desirable OSes into one – that just creates a big ugly mess that is a terrible drain on small devices and not much better for larger devices either. And the “merger” notion itself was so deeply confused. Bringing Android apps to Chrome OS has proved to be feasible using the existing containers feature of Chrome OS. Conversely, web apps (in the form that Google advocates) already run on Android, via the Chrome browser, so there is no need to fiddle with the respective AOSP and Chromium codebases (at a deep level) to get Android apps running on Chrome OS or web apps running on Android. These challenges have been solved (or are currently being solved) without the necessity of a grand merger of codebases, which would be a very imprudent approach to system software development and perhaps a recipe for disaster.

      Fuchsia, on the other hand is more of a moonshot effort, it appears. It looks like Google does eventually want to bring all the goodness of Android and web apps and more together on one (open source) codebase that Google maintains (currently there is the codependency with the Linux community for all of Google’s consumer OSes). The development is being done in the open so we will all be able to see for ourselves whether it works on not.

      “i would never want them to merge android and chrome”
      As I have explained whether you choose Android or Chrome OS that is already happening and there is no stopping it.

      “isn’t android slow because its written in some form of java derivative?”
      Android apps are often written in Java (Google has its own approach to building and executing application code, however, and linking to native C/C++ libraries) but that doesn’t mean that Android is slow. What you may be suggesting is that iOS screen operations and applications are marginally faster (and/or less resource hungry). That is basically true and, in my judgement, not very important. iOS uses a fully compiled language (Swift, recently, and formerly Objective C) for key parts of the OS which does offer speed and efficiency gains in some situations. Apple also optimise everything to the nth degree on their devices. So they should; they design the chips that iOS runs on. The upshot of all this is: if you need that small increment of speed and efficiency go with Apple and forever live in that walled garden. Otherwise, you can get an Android or Chrome OS device from a long list of manufacturers in countless configurations, using chips with different instruction sets, at comparably reasonable prices and in all cases everything will run well. And, if everything is properly optimised, any speed and efficiency deficits will barely be noticeable.