Going native

You'll probably already know that some months back Google released their own browser called Chrome. Its pretty cool, integrates search well and breaks occasionally. From a comms point of view the book they released to get across the technology and approach they took is a nice touch.

Despite pretty slow growth for the browser they announced at Le Web today that it will be coming out of beta (oddly perhaps as gmail is still in beta and is a lot longer in the tooth!). What they also announced very recently is the launch of a thing called Native Client.

Currently applications running on a machine can leverage all of its power, however browser-based apps have much less to play with. Native Client will mean we can build applications that use all the native power from within the browser.

This is significant for a couple of reasons; first it suggests that Google are of the feeling that the browser as it stands is some way short of what is needed for a fulfilling web experience. Second it means we will be able to build web applications that can do some of the heavy lifting like graphic and video manipulation, full blown gaming, 3d and more. Combine this with the offline power of Gears and you have the potential to do some completely new things with your browser based app.