Apple might be viewed as one closed ecosystem, but the company does make efforts to loosen up in terms of open source programming.
In 2014, the enterprise announced Swift - a programing language that reached global coders as open-source at the end of last year. Unconfirmed rumors claim that Google itself considers adopting Swift as a "first class" language for its Android platform.
Java is currently the only first-class programming language used on Android, and insiders familiar with the matter say that Java will not be replaced by Swift. However, Google is looking for alternative premium programming languages as its litigation with Oracle over the permitted Java uses drags on.
Swift already got commended for its lighting fast speed, and the fact that it is open source means that Google has free reign to use it how it sees fit. One additional advantage of using Swift could be that quite a few apps could reach Google's ecosystem first. At the moment, Apple tends to launch apps faster due to the quickness of programming in Swift.
At the end of 2015, a reported meeting between representatives of Uber, Facebook and Google took place in London. The three companies discussed the ways in which Swift could benefit them, with Uber and Facebook considering the possibility to make the open source programming language "more central to operations."
Google, meanwhile, is reportedly looking forward to implement Android support for Swift.
It should be mentioned that this would not be a piece of cake for the search engine company. Swift can't be easily transferred between platforms, which implies that Android needs to create a runtime for Swift as the first step in its integration.
Another modification that Google would have to make is rewriting its standard library in Swift to make sure that the language gets support in both SDKs and APIs. The problems could arise in low-level Android APIs, which are based on C++. Swift cannot be currently bridged to the general-purpose programming language.
Some issues could arise when developers attempt to bridge Swift with higher level Java APIs. Rewriting them to match the newer technology will be challenging, but possible.
Google made no official statement regarding Swift's adoption, but we will keep you posted as soon as we hear something certain.
