In other news, Microsoft to embrace Linux. Hahahaha ha ah oh wait.

NextWeb reports Google’s considering Swift as a first class Android language. I’m not surprised companies like Facebook and Uber are embracing Swift as it’s sufficiently open and highly attractive in an environment where iOS is king.

But no, Google won’t embrace it. Just because something is open source doesn’t mean everyone has equal influence. There’s still control at the top of the repo and this is why Google forked Webkit, an effort to control its own destiny instead of relying on the very same company that controls Swift.

Furthermore, Google and Android is still engaged in a tired, ongoing, battle with Oracle over Java, another language that is - “for varying definitions of” - open. And Oracle isn’t even a direct competitor.

It’s true that there’s a lot to be said for a more dynamic, scripty, language on Android. While Android Studio has done a lot to improve the developer experience for Android devs, a lot of work done is exploratory UI, something that a language like Swift can help with.

If Google were to embrace a dynamic language, and assuming they don’t start from scratch, there are really only three contenders: Go and Dart, since Google completely control them (more likely Dart as it’s more suited to UI). And JavaScript, since it’s immensely popular and under no one company’s control (and as a bonus, Dart is designed to compile nicely to JS, so Google can still support it as a higher level alternative). Just as Swift has made iOS a much more approachable platform for casual developers, embracing the world’s most popular language could be a nice boost for developer traction in the Android world.