Developers could use Native Client to speed up a photo-sharing Web site, for example, so that users could touch up photos without ever leaving the site, Google spokesman Brad Chen wrote on a company blog. "Modern PCs can execute billions of instructions per second, but today's web applications can access only a small fraction of this computational power," he said.
Google doesn't expect the software to be widely used just yet. "Native Client is a research technology so the goal of this release is to expose it to the research, security and open source communities for their feedback and contributions," a Google spokeswoman said.
Native Client looks similar to Microsoft's ActiveX technology but will run on Linux and the Mac OS as well as Windows, Web experts said Monday. It also bears a resemblance to an Adobe technology called Alchemy.
"Google is clearly reaching for ways to take more control over the desktop, the Web browser and user content," said Robert Hansen, CEO of security consultancy SecTheory. "Native Client appears to be another way to reach into people's computers and use as many resources as possible. It's not a matter of whether it can be done. It's a question of if it should be done. We haven't even solved yesterday's problems yet, let alone another ActiveX clone."
Native Client is not intended to replace any existing technology, Google said. "We believe developers can use this technology alongside others to create applications that provide a richer, more dynamic experience than ever before," the Google spokeswoman said.
The software does not yet work with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but runs on the Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera browsers. The developers hope to support Internet Explorer eventually, the spokeswoman said.
To keep Native Client secure, Google has built what it calls an "inner-sandbox" that will analyze code for security bugs and protect the rest of the operating system from being compromised.
*THIS WEEK HOT NEWS*
* New beta is the first version of Firefox to turn on a much faster JavaScript engine and sport a working privacy mode.
*n pledging to "renew our information superhighway," President-elect Barack Obama has offered the broad outline of an economic stimulus plan likely to lead to major increases in IT spending -- especially for broadband deployment and technology for schools and health care.
*In a tribute to computer industry pioneer Doug Engelbart, dignitaries from IT and academic realms espoused the concept of "collective intelligence" at a technology event Monday, emphasizing developments such as search engines that promote the idea.
*Microsoft has released an early version of an open-source content management platform that developers can use to build sophisticated blogs or large Web sites.
*Dell and EMC have agreed to extend their worldwide storage partnership, even though the existing deal -- which has generated billions in sales for the two companies -- doesn't end until 2011.
*Intel said on Friday it is researching technology to harvest free energy from the environment, which could lead to devices like mobile phones running for indefinite periods without recharging.
*If you install the beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) expecting to see visible changes to your version of Vista, you'll be sorely disappointed. At least in this initial beta, all the changes are under the hood, and even they are far from earth-shaking.
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