> The problem, though, is that building a new platform is really, really, really hard, and they didn't succeed.

Yes. We bought into it and did a proof of concept app with Famous. We did get it to work, but it cost way too much effort, there were way too many bugs, and it ran on way too few browsers.

We decided to not use Famous again. The proof-of-concept app lingers around, it's still cool and we're hoping for a new chance if a community version of (in)famous becomes somewhat more mature.

The incentive for developers is that you don't write the same code twice.

Of course this applies to developers whose goal is to create software, as opposed to those whose goal is to bill hourly.

That's only an incentive for developers if they individually are writing the code for both platforms. Many (most?) shops where an app is the main product (or a very important piece of the main product) have separate iOS and Android dev teams.

(As I've developed for both platforms, I think I have some standing to say this)

Hold on, it's not that we don't want to build cross-platform apps, at least not universally. In my case, it's because I believe the contortions involved in abstracting out multiple wildly-divergent APIs built for different languages to a common system runtime necessarily lowers fidelity and quality for both.

"Write once run anywhere" ends up being a lot harder than "Learn once write anywhere" - I'm hopeful that React Native will demonstrate the success of this approach on mobile (even though, personally, I wish there were a non-JS option).

> Perhaps more importantly, Apple and Google aren't particularly interested in cross-platform technology either.

Ah, the problem with generalizations about large companies. http://flutter.io/, by Google.

The fact that flutter exists doesn't really change my view that I don't believe that Google is pushing it. Flutter to me seems much more of a "Hey, let's get some brilliant people at Google on a fun, hard project" than something Google sees as the future.

I agree, though, that Google has somewhat more of an incentive to build stuff cross platform than Apple does. Google wants you to access their services from any device, while Apple makes almost all their money from the devices themselves.

I think Android is also still a second class citizen when it comes to app development and if they can get some people who would have started with an iOS app to start with Flutter they might even the playing field.

Though that's probably not really worth that much since they're a close second, unlike everyone else.

It mostly sounds like they got sick of writing the same app twice internally though, which I could definitely see happening to people who just want to ship product and aren't platform partisans (it would be a bit weird to me for iOS partisans to go work at google?).

Flutter is in line with Google's business objectives. The more people transition to mobile apps, the more mobile searches people will make (as opposed to in-app searches.)

They don't care if you are on Android or on mobile web, so cannibalization here isn't an issue; both lead to Google searches.

I think you misunderstand how Google operates. Google is a huge company that, even though less bureaucratic than companies of the same size, has many layers of management. I'd be surprised if any top executives even know that Flutter exists. My point is, adevine is right, Flutter is probably a small internal project that a bunch of devs got behind and got approval from a middle manager to release. It indicates very little about what's on the mind of the real decision makers at Google (e.g. the VPs in charge of Android or mobile or search).

Now, it might get momentum and eventually get more attention and more resources from Google leadership; but it also might not.