Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission. Learn more.
Google's 'Hummingbird' could make running all apps everywhere a reality
- At the Flutter Live event today, Google surprised everyone by revealing Google Hummingbird, a new project.
- Hummingbird will take Flutter one step further by allowing app developers to create web apps, too.
- If it works, Hummingbird could finally give app creators the power to write their app once, and have it run pretty much anywhere.
Today, Google officially launched the very first stable version of Flutter, the company’s new app development platform. Our own Gary Sims does a terrific job explaining in detail what Flutter is and how it affects you. Check that article out right here.
The gist of Flutter is that app developers will be able to write the code of a new app in Flutter and then that app will run not only on Android but on iOS as well. This will prevent developers from having to create and maintain two separate apps. This will be a huge boon to Android where app updates sometimes come weeks or even months after their iOS counterparts.
At the end of the event announcing Flutter, Google surprised the audience by announcing a new project called Google Hummingbird. Hummingbird appears to be the next step of Flutter in that it will enable developers to write an app once and then run that app on mobile devices, browsers, computers, etc. If it works, it would finally give app developers what they’ve always dreamed of: the ability to write an app once and then have it run everywhere.
This, in turn, would be a huge boon for app consumers like ourselves, as we would be able to run an app on any system we wish. We would no longer have to lament that our favorite Android app doesn’t work on desktop, or our favorite computer app doesn’t work on our tablet. Theoretically, if it’s written in Hummingbird, it will work on pretty much anything.
Google did not offer much detail about when Hummingbird will see a launch nor did it offer an early-access preview of how it works. However, the simple fact that Google is even attempting such an undertaking is certainly very exciting.
If you’re the technical type, you can read the very detailed synopsis of what Hummingbird is over at the Flutter blog. Click below to learn more about Flutter!
NEXT: Flutter 1.0 released: The first stable release of Google’s mobile UI toolkit