Alphabet's tech giant, Google, has announced a new partnership with Replit, an AI-powered coding platform, to create a source control for developers, in an effort to compete with GitHub, the largest Code repository in the world. This collaboration is aimed to create a coding repository with increase accessibility to coding tools that are simpler for both expert programmers and beginners.
Replit is a platform that enables programmers to write, share, and work in real-time collaboration with other programmers and currently boasts of over 2 million users. Moreover, it has a code editor driven by AI that can make recommendations for enhancements and optimizations to the code being written.
In its new update, the startup says it will soon be able to develop a potent platform that can compete with GitHub through partnership with Alphabet Inc's Google.
Google plans to make use of Replit's AI-driven editor and code optimizer to enhance users' coding experiences for the new Google-Replit platform to be more efficient.
Already, Replit's editor can make suggestions for enhancements and optimizations to the code being produced, as well as advice on how to write better codes through autopilot tools. However, Replit said that its Ghostwriter software would be utilizing Google's Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to improve its current App ability to suggest code snippets, finish programming, and respond to questions from programmers.
Replit has developed a variety of multiple systems to handle diverse jobs like chatting and writing code for years but its partnership with Google is a double-up advantage.
June Yang, vice president of Google Cloud, in his statement, did not clarify which Google's language AI technologies Replit will be using. He only affirmed that programs from Replit will be provided by Google as part of their agreement.
GitHub is the most widely used platform for coders to share their works, collaborate, communicate and show their portfolio. Wikipedia data show that GitHub currently host over 100 million developers and more than 372 million repositories, including at least 28 million public repositories.
Using Github is often challenging for newcomers and sometimes complex for those who are not familiar with the platform. Therefore, offering a simpler to use and comprehensible platform means that Google and Replit groundbreaking code repository, no doubt, will be more preferable for coding over Microsoft owned GitHub.
In addition, Alphet (Google’s holding company) being the second largest tech company in the world gives the project upper hand and poses a great threat for GitHub which has offered similar services for years.
Google and Microsoft have been at the top of the AI race following the emergence of OpenAI ChatGPT which is highly funded by Microsoft. While Microsoft recently incorporated ChatGPT on its Bing browser and other online resources to outsmart Google, the later had also introduced more AI tools for the past months including MusicML, Dreamix, among others.
The recent collaboration between Google and Replit offers the two companies offers a fantastic chance to develop an unbeatable, powerful and convenient platform for programmers in their advantage over Microsoft. With the help of Google's resources and Replit's AI-powered code editor, the new platform might successfully out space GitHub and change the choice of programming source control in few years’ time.
