For several months now we’ve been hearing rumors that Google’s new Android Silver program was going to replace the Nexus line of devices. This, of course, caused some uproar among the stock Android faithful. David Burke, head of Android engineering and the Nexus program at Google, spoke out in an interview today to put those rumors to rest. Speaking to Read Write, Burke said that people are simply getting excited about the concept of something new (Android Silver) and forgetting about Google’s reasons for the Nexus line in the first place.

“People just get excited by concepts and forget why we do things. We are still invested in Nexus,” he said. “People have been commenting about Nexus because there is something else and they think that means the end of Nexus. That is the totally wrong conclusion to make.”

As for the “something else” Burke mentioned, he said it was Android Silver, but that Google is not ready to comment on it just yet.

“Android Silver is not something that we are commenting on right now,” he said. But the prospect of Silver doesn’t mean that Nexus is going away.

Burke went on to explain why Google has the Nexus line of devices in the first place. He explained that the company focuses on two things at any given time, building a Nexus device and building the open source code. Without the Nexus device, Burke doesn’t know how the company would build the code.

You can’t build a platform in the abstract, you have to build a device (or devices). So, I don’t think can can or will ever go away. And then, I think Nexus is also interesting in that it is a way of us explaining how we think Android should run. It is a statement, almost a statement of purity in some respects. I don’t see why we would ever turn away from that, it wouldn’t make sense.

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