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Google Forging Ahead with Native Client--Headed for Chrome

Ever since last year, Google has been working on an open source project called Native Client, which is designed to run software applications downloaded from the web on x86 processors--running them natively, rather than within a browser. There are several advantages to running applications natively. For example, web-based applications rely heavily on JavaScript, and often technologies such as Flash, which are known to provide performance bottlenecks compared to the speed you can get when running applications natively.

Running downloaded applications natively also introduces problems, though, especially security problems. Nevertheless, Google has ambitious plans for Native Client, including Chrome integration.

In a lengthy post from Brad Chen, Engineering Manager at Google, he describes many steps forward that the company is taking with its Native Client effort, including integrating it with the Chrome web browser.

Google has taken a number of steps to improve the security surrounding Native Client, including holding a security contest with cash prizes designed to solicit contributions to answers on how to stay secure when running untrusted applications from the web natively. Chen's new blog post says "we believe that the basic architecture of our system is sound and the implementation is supportable," so Google is pursuing moving Native Client from a research project to a development platform.

CNet's Stephen Shankland notes that integration with Chrome is an important part of the path Google has in mind for Native Client:

"And now we see one reason why Google is interested having a browser of its own available: 'Careful readers may have already noticed evidence of integration into Chromium in the Native Client source,' Chen said, referring to the open-source project that underlies the Chrome browser."

Shankland also notes that "Google is trying to pair Native Client with another company project, O3D, which lets browsers take advantage of hardware to accelerate 3D graphics." We wrote about O3D here, which is currently an open source browser plug-in that provides an API for building and displaying accelerated, rich interactive 3D applications.

With Google looking to integrate Native Client with Chrome, and with the company focusing on integrating it with the O3D browser plug-in, it sounds like it's wrong to characterize Native Client as an effort to extract web applications entirely from the constraints of the browser and the web, running them natively. Instead, it's looking like Google foresees local, native CPU and hardware resources as important ways to acclerate aspects of how applications run, while taking a hybrid approach that will involve browsers and extensions. We'll see where all this goes, but it sounds like it could lead to good workarounds for the many bottlenecks that browsers, JavaScript, Flash, similar online technologies--plus connectivity limations--introduce.
 

• google
• Chrome
• Chromium
• Native Client
• 3D Graphics
• O3D

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