Hardcore hazelnut with some heady notes of cocoa, and smoothness to spare. It’s not hard to see why Nutella is so incredibly popular, more than enough to put it in the running for the name of the next Android version. In the wake of the official user-driven poll that Google hosted, the Italian chocolatier Ferrero’s answer to plain old peanut butter saw an incredible amount of love on the internet, which presumably translated to an incredible amount of votes, though that contest wound up being thrown out. A favorite traditional Indian treat also got into the running, but Nutella may have neyyappam beaten, if Tweets from Google’s VP of Android, Chrome and the Play Store are any indication. Of course, Hiroshi Lockheimer could just really love the stuff.
Lockheimer’s Twitter has been going utterly Nutella-crazy for quite some time now. On February 22, for example, he Tweeted, “I had to look up how to spell nougat. But I do know how to spell Nutella.” This was, of course, only a few short weeks after February 5, which was National Nutella Day. A bit closer to the present, he Tweeted out a menu of Italian eats bearing a few different items such as timeless tiramisu and classic gelato, and of course, a Nutella pizzetta. His caption? “There’s one specific dish on this menu that I’m keenly interested in.” Another Tweet, captioned, “Just testing some stuff out.”, bore a random smattering of windows in an Android environment, one of which was a Google window searching for, simply, “Nutella”.
Clearly, Lockheimer is nutty for the hazelnutter-butter, but could this recent showing of his obsession constitute a hint as to what the newest version of Android will be named? Aside from nougat, his Tweets did not mention any of Nutella’s competition in the running. Nutella, being as popular as it is, could very well drum up some offbeat interest in Android; some people outside of the ecosystem don’t know about the dessert-based naming scheme. If Nutella does win out, it wouldn’t be Google’s first licensed name, with Android 4.4 having been named KitKat. For now, dessert obsession or no, the name for Android N is still up in the air.