Kyle Bradshaw joined 9to5Google in 2018 with a special interest in Google’s Fuchsia OS, rooted in his experience of being the first to offer a visual preview of the revolutionary design of the in-development operating system. Since then, his attention has broadened to include the secrets hidden within other areas of Google’s public codebases.
By reading the public Fuchsia code, Kyle was able to prove the existence of the Nest Mini and the Nest Hub Max months ahead of their respective announcements. With evidence from Chromium, he reported on Google’s since-canceled efforts to create an offshoot of Android designed for “touchless” feature phones.
In 2018, Kyle reported on three distinct Made by Google Chromebooks in development, the Pixel Slate, the Pixelbook Go — a full year before its release — and “Meowth,” the original version of the Pixel Slate that was canceled due to Intel’s delays that year. For ChromeOS itself, Kyle was the first to demonstrate the upcoming light theme redesign in action.
Looking at the early evidence of the Pixel 5’s specs, Kyle accurately predicted in February 2020 that the Pixel 5 might not be a traditional “flagship” phone. In 2021, he reported that Google’s next headset would be the “Pixel Buds A.”
Kyle was the first to report that the Pixel 6 would mark the debut of Google’s in-house processors, later revealed to be the Tensor chips.
Kyle contributes to the APK Insight column at 9to5Google, discovering the hidden changes in Google’s apps. These efforts have revealed hotly anticipated features, details about upcoming devices, and unexpected connections between companies.
He can be reached for tips or just friendly chat by Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, or email. If you’re looking for his other works or side projects, head over to Kyle’s personal portfolio.
Sometime in late May, Fuchsia, Google’s in-development OS for mobile (and more), added a loose connection to AOSP in the form of new ‘projects’ in their Gerrit source code management hub, but now the code is being used and we can see what it’s actually for.
In a progressive move, Google has released a new open-source privacy library to allow developers to encrypt Android push notifications.
As part of a bigger move towards third-part interoperability in G Suite, Google has entered into a partnership with Norwegian companies Pexip and Videxio to introduce interoperability between Hangouts Meet and a variety of video conferencing services.
According to a report from Windows Central, the Xbox One will be receiving an update to gain support for Google Assistant and Alexa, in addition to its existing Cortana support.
Since we first heard about it in 2016, we’ve pretty much known that Fuchsia will run on a variety of devices — from phones to traditional laptop/desktop computers. There’s more to it, though. In the past few months, Fuchsia’s Zircon kernel has picked up support for a handful of new devices, including two codenamed Google projects, each expanding the reach of what Fuchsia will run on.
Thus far in the Fuchsia Friday column, I’ve been Fuchsia’s number one fan, and each week I hope my enthusiasm shines through. This week, however, I’d like to address something in the work-in-progress OS that has me worried, albeit not a problem that’s unique to Fuchsia in any case.
On its Open Source Blog, Google announced the first major revision of the open source Git protocol.
Last night on CBS, 60 Minutes aired a segment called “The Real Power of Google” which looked at anti-trust claims against Google from anti-competition experts and, of all companies, Yelp.
In the last few days, some of you have noticed that Android is gaining some of the same kinds of features and concepts we’ve discovered are coming in Fuchsia. Let’s take a few minutes to dig into each of them and what they mean as a whole for the two OSes.
Australia’s ACCC is using information from Oracle to investigate Google and Android’s potential privacy issues and excess mobile data usage.
With all the developer excitement following Google I/O this week, we’re keeping in theme with a developer-oriented Fuchsia Friday.
Since its announcement almost a year ago, we’ve wondered what implementing Project Treble would look like in the real world. This week we got our first taste.
During the I/O 2018 Developer Keynote, Google announced a successor to the APK format that will bring wild new features and improvements to the Android ecosystem.
During the I/O 2018 Keynote, Dave Burke unveiled ML Kit, Google’s new tool to let mobile developers experiment with machine learning.
During the I/O 2018 Keynote, Google announced the release of its new TPU 3.0 chip.
In what has been a busy week of pre-I/O announcements, Google’s Flutter Team has announced the app development kit’s Beta 3 release.
With I/O just around the corner, many are left wondering why Fuchsia doesn’t seem to be present. While that does, at first, seem to be the case, the truth is a little more complicated.
With I/O only days away, Google is prepping a big upgrade for its laptop and tablet OS which will open it up even further to power users.
Earlier this month, Fuchsia gained its first official screenshot tool! No more looking ridiculous by taking a photo of a screen. With this change, I figure now is the perfect time to give a closer look at some first impressions of Fuchsia’s user experience.
Today, Fuchsia has made a surprising first entrance into Android’s source code. While not necessarily important for anyone now (outside of Google), this might be a helpful hint for us continue piecing together what the future of both operating systems might look like.
Google continues its spree of slowly retiring apps in favor of newer ones, with all G Suite administrators receiving a notice about video meetings.
Another OEM has joined Google in its international, affordability-focused Android Go program.
This week on Fuchsia Friday, we look at one of the most requested features of Fuchsia and how it might be possible.
In an attempt to completely block the Telegram service in its country, the Russian government has broadly blocked Google and Amazon’s cloud services.