How Google Cut Memory Use and Defects by Switching from Go/C++ to Rust

Google’s Android engineering director Lars Bergstrom shared at the Rust Nation conference how the company migrated projects written in Go or C++ to Rust.

After moving internal code from Go to Rust, Google observed more than a two‑fold increase in productivity, lower memory consumption, reduced defect rates, and higher correctness, with 85 % of developers expressing strong confidence in Rust’s reliability.

Bergstrom noted that earlier adopters such as Dropbox in 2016 and Figma in 2018 demonstrated that concerns about Rust’s productivity and safety have largely faded, though some skepticism about its reliability remains.

He also highlighted a broader industry shift, as many organizations and U.S. government agencies now recommend transitioning from C/C++ to memory‑safe languages like Rust.

Within Google, rewriting services from Go to Rust did not increase development effort, and the team saw significant reductions in memory usage and defect rates over time, effectively halving the workload required for building, maintaining, and updating Rust‑based services compared to C++.