Google Chrome OS goes native (code)
Google’s Chrome OS does not run local applications or store local data. Everything is handled inside the browser. But when the much-hyped operating system debuts on netbooks at the end of next year, you can bet it will execute native code on behalf of online Google applications such as Gmail or Docs and Spreadsheets.
In other words, Google apps will tap directly into the netbook’s processor in an effort to close the performance gap that separates them from the local software offered by its bête noire, Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft. And this being Google, they won’t use Java, Flash, or Silverlight.
In typical fashion, Google is playing coy over the role of native code in its fledgling OS. But the company says its Native Client project – which executes native code inside today’s Google Chrome web browser – is an “important part” of an effort to boost the performance of web-based applications running on its netbook operating system, set to appear on x86 and ARM netbooks around November 2010.
Currently, Native Client (NaCl) runs only on x86 machines – via Windows, Mac, and Linux. But Google has confirmed it’s building a version for ARM.
Google unveiled its Native Client plug-in a year ago, calling it “a technology that aims to give web developers access to the full power of the client’s CPU while maintaining the browser neutrality, OS portability, and safety that people expect from web applications.” Then, in October, it rolled the plug-in into the latest version of its Chrome browser, which serves as the basis for Chrome OS.
Chrome OS is essentially the browser running atop a Goobuntu flavor of Linux.
At the moment, Native Client is turned off by default in Google’s browser. But clearly, bigger things are ahead. During Google’s November press conference unveiling an early version of Chrome OS, vp of product management Sundar Pichai and engineering director Matthew Papakipos were hit with not one but two questions about the role of Native Client in their fledgling operating system. And twice they answered only in part.
“We are investing a lot in additional technologies like Native Client, which will make it really possible for some of the most performance-intensive desktop applications to become web applications,” Pichai said in response to question number one.
