x86, the ultimate applet engine?

I need to watch out or people will start calling me a Google fan boy or
something (well, too late). It seems everything they come up with
lately grabs my attention. And I guess it makes sense, because they
seem to be heading in a different direction than a lot of people, and
more in a direction that appeals to me. First Android (open mobile
handset), then Google Chrome (Webkit-based browser), then the V8 C++
friendly JavaScript VM, and now, Native Client.

If
you haven’t heard of it, it appears to be a Google research project
into running secured native x86 code in a browser. Yes, we have tried
that before with ActiveX and it was a security disaster. But the
underlying need for high performance interactive web pages is pretty
intriguing. If you could write browser applets in C++, why wouldn’t
you? I suppose…

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