Google has many projects that users don't know about. Some of them are simply not popular, and some are kept secret by the company itself. However, the point here is not that the search giant wants to make a secret out of this, but in the banal unwillingness to talk about an unprepared product ahead of time. After all, in the end, it may not work out, and then one would have to explain why the announced novelty was frozen or canceled altogether, as was the case with the AirPower wireless charging station from Apple. Another thing is that sometimes even Google is unable to hide the existence of a new project, which immediately becomes public knowledge.
Apparently, Google is working on a project for a new operating system.
Google has applied to register the Pigweed trademark. According to information from the database of the US Patent and Trademark Office, the new brand of the search giant extends to operating systems and computer software. It would seem, what's wrong with that? After all, technology companies quite often register new trademarks and patents just in reserve, even without having any plans for them. However, in the case of Pigweed, things turned out to be somewhat different.
New operating system from Google
Pigweed is a new operating system from Google about which almost nothing is known yet
Despite the fact that the first public mention of Pigweed came precisely from the filing of the US Patent and Trademark Office, a more detailed analysis showed that this is not entirely true. As it turned out, references to the new project are also contained in the Fuchsia operating system, which Google, due to its versatility, uses to test and debug innovations for existing platforms. For example, on the basis of Fuchsia, the company's developers tested many functions Android before bringing them to life in the release version.
In addition, Pigweed already has its own development team that is not part of the company's staff. They are testing it using bug tracking systems like Gerrit and Monorail. From this we can conclude that if the new operating system is not yet ready for release, then at least it has a physical embodiment, which has bugs and its own set of functions. After all, you see, if it were a project described only on paper, then there would obviously be nothing to edit and test.
Why do you need Pigweed
It is not yet very clear what exactly Pigweed is. On the one hand, it is already known that this is an operating system, but, on the other hand, there is no understanding of what purpose it will serve, what set of functions it will have and, most importantly, when it will be released and whether it will be released at all. After all, as we remember, Google already has a Fuchsia project, which turned out to be not a successor to Android and Chrome OS, but just a testing ground for testing new functions. Therefore, there is no guarantee that Pigweed is not the next iteration of Fuchsia, but a commercial platform.
However, if you use your brains, you can come up with the purpose of Pigweed pretty quickly. Despite the fact that Google has operating systems for smartphones, watches and computers right now, Pigweed may well combine them into one whole. Is it necessary from a practical point of view? In my opinion, yes. In the end, it was not for nothing that Huawei made its HarmonyOS universal, because in this way it will be easier to develop and maintain it without being sprayed on several independent projects at once.