Chris McKillop, engineering director of Google’s Fuchsia project, leaves the company [U]

The engineering lead of Google’s Fuchsia operating system, Chris McKillop, has announced his departure from Google.

Google has been known to be developing Fuchsia as a from-scratch operating system since at least 2016. Fuchsia ultimately saw its first launch last year on the first-gen Nest Hub smart display. For much of that time, the Fuchsia project has been headed up by Director of Engineering Chris McKillop.

With a successful launch now in the rearview and Fuchsia firmly on the path to greater things, McKillop has announced on Twitter that he has left Google after ten years with the company. During that time, in addition to starting the Fuchsia project, McKillop helped shape the Flutter team — which has long had close ties to Fuchsia — and was also briefly involved with the Android TV team.

I don’t eat quiche, I make operating systems. I started Fuchsia at Google 7 years ago, built the team and shipped F1->F4.1.2. Amazing journey and I cannot wait to see where Fuchsia goes next!

Prior to working at Google, McKillop was also one of the original team members involved with creating the webOS project at Palm and, before that, the team at Apple that built the first version of the iPhone OS. The latter project, internally referred to as “Purple” was one of the core inspirations for McKillop and Fuchsia, along with Apple’s “Pink” operating system from the late 1980s.

Update: McKillop has now shared that his next destination is Microsoft, working as a VP of Digital Incubation on the Xbox team. The new position involves “looking at all things metaverse, web3, crypto, blockchain, etc for Xbox and gaming,” a significant change of pace from crafting systems like webOS, iOS, and Fuchsia.

Of course, nothing is changing for the future of Fuchsia at Google, with McKillop calling the current team “one of the best ever assembled” and expressing excitement for the future of the project.

More on Fuchsia:

• Here’s the full Google Chrome browser running on Fuchsia [Gallery]
• Nest Hub Max may soon run Fuchsia as Google ramps up internal testing [Update: Vulkan approval]
• Google’s Fuchsia is expanding to ‘additional smart devices and other form factors’