Google’s plans for Fuchsia OS revealed in job postings

According to a number of job postings first spotted by Google, “it’s time” to bring its mysterious Fuchsia operating system to “additional smart devices and other form factors” beyond smart screens. 9to5Google. Fuchsia is Google’s newest operating system, released earlier this year for the company’s first-generation Nest Hub.

There has been a lot of speculation about Google’s plans for Fuchsia, which unlike Android and Chrome OS doesn’t use a Linux kernel (it uses a microkernel called Zircon instead), and whose purpose is still pretty vague though. that it has been public for more than five years. . When it first arrived on the Nest Hub, it was more or less functionally identical to the software that came before it. The new job postings offer some clues to Fuchsia’s future.

For starters, it looks like Google now has a named “Fuchsia Devices team” working on the operating system, which gives an indication of how important the software is internally. A job posting states that this team “is responsible for ensuring that we can successfully apply the Fuchsia platform to real world products that make a difference to Google and our users.”

Meanwhile, that same list notes that Google is working hard to bring Fuchsia to “additional smart devices and other form factors,” confirming that it is under development for devices beyond. smart screens. This is not entirely surprising given 9to5Google has previously reported that the operating system is running on smart speakers.

There is no mention of what exactly these new form factors are, but another of the job postings (which has since been deleted) spotted by 9to5Google mentions that the devices will have “Chromecast, video conferencing and machine learning” capabilities. In this context, 9to5Google Note that “Chromecast” likely refers to devices that allow you to “cast” video from another device for playback, rather than dedicated Chromecast dongles that plug into the back of a TV.

Finally, there’s a tantalizing clue that Fuchsia could either perform or interact with non-Google partner material in a third job posting for someone who “will make sure Fuchsia brings maximum value to partners. and fuchsia products. Google has a long history of working with partners to bring Google software to hardware other than Google, and has already partnered with companies like JBL and Lenovo on their smart displays.

None of these clues offer concrete information about Fuchsia’s future. But given how low-key the OS remains five years after it was announced, we’ll take what we can get.