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.?
