The Google Platform emerges

Currently, Microsoft holds the keys to the public computer platform. Apple, Linux and other operating systems exist but they have a very minor user base, compared to the Microsoft crowd.

The biggest threats, currently to this are Google and Open Source. The biggest reason, Microsoft users are unable to move away from their platform is the fact that most of the programs they use are written for Windows and will not run anywhere else.

Google knows this, so Google has been very focused in the previous years to promote Internet standards by contributing to standards work and to open source projects.

Recently, Google has introduced a number of projects that I think are important to their final strategy.

Google Chrome

An open source browser, based on the open source webkit rendering engine with its own open source javascript engine called V8.

This is essentially a cross-platform browser that serves as a Google platform for any machine, running the browser.

Google Native Client

The native client is an attempt to offer native code execution from the browser. This sounds a lot like ActiveX (from Microsoft) but Google appears to be very focused on potential security threats from this plugin.

Executing native code in a browser will allow developers to create fast games, performance intensive applications and pretty much anything they want with minimal overhead in the browser window.

Google Native Client is currently a part of Chrome/Chromium and is available as a plugin for other browsers.

Video introduction of Native Client

Google Android

The Android platform is by now becoming a very popular platform for the mobile phone. Current Android applications are written in Java although it is possible to write some services in C/C++.

Google Chrome OS

Late in 2009, Google revealed Chrome OS. A Linux based operating system that is focused around the Chrome browser. Google has also said that there will be almost no "on-computer applications". This means almost all functionality of the netbook will be internet-based.

Where's the evil plan?

Google wants web applications, it has focused its resources on creating a browser, a javascript engine to push web standards to their limits (such as Canavas and HTML5). This is where Google makes most of their money from, advertising and searching.

However, Google also recognizes that even though Javascript is becoming very fast, there are some applications that need native execution for better performance. This is where Native Client comes in.

I believe that Native Client will be released built-in for Android, Chrome and Chrome-OS and this platform will actively start to compete with conventional platforms, such as Windows, Linux and Mac.

Conclusion

There is much developer effort being wasted by writing software that is specific to an operating system or a desktop environment. Just imagine that you could run any application on any system.

This will hopefully provide users with much needed freedom with computers, instead being locked in with certain platforms. So, programmers; learn Javascript and learn Native Client.

In the end, I think there will the Microsoft side (.NET/C#) and there will be an open source side (Javascript/C/C++ (under NaCl). Me personally, I looked towards Qt, as it is a powerful framework and people have already started porting it to Native Client (very early stages), which is cool.