Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System

Chet Haase

Aug 2021 · Chet Haase

About this ebook

In 2004, Android was two people who wanted to build camera software. But they couldn't get investors interested. Today, Android is a large team at Google, shipping an operating system (including camera software) to over three billion devices worldwide.

This is the inside story, told by the people who made it happen.

“What are the essential ingredients that lead a small team to build software at the sheer scale and impact of Android? We may never fully know, but this first person account is probably the closest set of clues we have.”

–Dave Burke, VP of Android Engineering

“Androids captures a strong picture of what the early development of Android, as well as the Android team, was like.”

–Dianne Hackborn, Android Framework Engineer

“Androids is the engaging tale of a motley group of coders with a passion to make insanely great products who banged out the operating system when that idea seemed nuts.

True to his geek genes, Chet Haase tells this remarkable tale of technical and business success from the trenches, an inspiring, massive collective effort of dozens of programmers who flipped their seemingly late timing to their advantage, and presaged a generation of platform builders. Read Androids to discover what it takes to create a hot tech team that shipped a product running today on more than 3 billion devices.”

–Jonathan Littman, co-author of The Entrepreneurs Faces: How Makers, Visionaries and Outsiders Succeed, and author of The Fugitive Game

All profits from the book will be donated to charity.

Ratings and reviews

Brilliant journey of 100 people making world wide impact and change the history of smart phones. Each part of their legends are insightful lessons for everyone in the tech industry. The author dive deep into the information and context of all key decisions and their consequences. Must read for Android geeks and everyone working in the tech industry.

A page-turner book on the origins of Android OS. It is a story of one of the most impactful software projects in the past two decades. The book is filled with quotes from the folks that were part of the journey. Chet did a great job interweaving stories with a healthy amount of wit to keep the book from being dry. If you want to learn how the Android sausage was made, this is a book for you.

Good Book for those who love to use their Android as a daily driver 😊👍. Android fans should read this book

About the author

Chet Haase has worked at several Silicon Valley tech companies, including Adobe Systems, Sun Microsystems, and startups. In 2010, he joined the Android engineering team at Google and watched Android rise from the bottom of the smartphone field to where it is today.