Google Collections

Google Collections: Library of Data Structure Implementations

A library of data structure implementations for multiple programming languages created by Google aimed at improving programming productivity.

What is Google Collections?

Google Collections was an open-source library created by Google that provided implementations of common data structures for Java, C++, and several other programming languages. It was first released in 2006.

The goal of Google Collections was to provide useful, reusable data structures and utilities to improve programming productivity. It included implementations of data structures like maps, sets, lists, queues, stacks, and more. The implementations aimed to have good performance and be easy to use.

Some key features of Google Collections included:

• Implementations of common data structures like maps, sets, queues, stacks, etc.
• APIs for those data structures that aimed to be clean and easy to use
• Good performance via techniques like caching and algorithmic optimizations
• Additional utilities like support for callbacks, iterators, comparators, etc.
• Supported multiple programming languages like Java, C++, and Python

Google Collections was widely used by Google internally on many of their products and services. Externally it gained significant adoption as well. However, in 2010, Google announced it would no longer actively maintain Google Collections, as many of its data structures had been incorporated into the languages themselves, such as the Java Collections Framework.

Google Collections Features

Official Links