Google’s Sundar Pichai has reiterated that there are no plans to ‘force convergence’ between Google’s two operating systems.
Speaking to the Economic Times of India, Pichai said that the company is not pursuing convergence for the sake of it, instead preferring to let it happen “organically.”
Speculation of a possible merging of the platforms was heightened after Pichai, then head of Google Chrome and Apps, took over development of Android from Andy Rubin, to oversee all three projects.
Google has, on multiple occasions, stated it has no plans to do this any time soon. And the approach, as Sundar goes on to explain, has its benefits: “If we had decided to fully converge, we wouldn’t have arrived at Chromecast. The team could think about it in a different way because the attributes of Chrome are different.”
Both Android and Chrome have inherent strengths and weakness, both driving largely different form factors. And, for now, each does its respective job better than the other.
Arbitrary
As convenient as it might seem from a marketing and developer perspective, combining Chrome and Android isn’t actually necessary. Both platforms share enough commonalities to allow for varying degrees of integration and innovation, e.g., Easy Login, Android Runtime, Cast API.
And with the arrival of Material Design, which aims create a universal design language for web and app developers to use, the boundaries between web, desktop and mobile will continue to blur for some time to come.
- Source: ET