Google has released Google Cloud API Client Libraries for Swift, a sign that the company sees Apple's language as more than a client-side UI tool. The libraries target Swift 6.2+ and use SwiftNIO's asynchronous event loops, HTTP/2 multiplexing, gRPC transport, and compiler flags for data race safety. Google's Karl Weinmeister and Carlos O'Ryan argue that Swift has matured into a viable systems and cloud language, pairing Rust-like data-race safety with predictable, reference-counted performance.
Server-side Swift has had a long and uneven history. Apple open-sourced Swift in 2015, IBM offered it on Bluemix in 2016, and Apple's SwiftNIO framework advanced the backend case in 2018. But IBM backed away in 2019, and Amazon's Smoke Framework has seen little recent activity. Swift's popularity also slipped: it ranked 9th in the TIOBE index in January 2020 and now sits at 18th, while Stack Overflow's 2025 survey placed it 20th.
Google's engineers say the new SDK suits servers, containers, and DevOps, and they point to Swift web frameworks like Hummingbird and Vapor for building microservices. They also highlight compile-time concurrency checking, claiming data races are caught in the editor before a binary compiles. The Register notes one open question: as AI coding agents write more code, language ergonomics may matter less, potentially undercutting Swift's approachability advantage over Rust or C++.