Introducing the next step in Web app development: Google's Native Client

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Browsers

Any doubt of Google's long-term plans can now be banished. It's a software platform, ladies and gentlemen -- a native, in-the-browser, secure and sandboxed platform. As of today you can now play with an early version of the Native Client (NaCl) SDK. You'll need a recent version of the Chromium browser too.

We first reported NaCl back in November 2009. Back then we thought it would tie in with Google's new systems-oriented language Go, but there's no mention of it on the NaCl announcement -- so far you can only compile C or C++ with a modified version of GCC.

There's still an awful lot you can do with C or C++ running natively in the browser though! Along with Mozilla's powerful, functionality-exposing NPAPI Pepper, the SDK also comes with lots of other open-source libraries for manipulating all sorts of data. Watch the video after the break if you want to see what NaCl is capable of -- including an impressive port of Nexuiz running in the browser.

Finally, let's not forget Google is also in the process of building its own high-speed fibre network too -- from eureka to data centre to Web browser, Google wants complete control over your Web Experience. That's vertical integration, folks!

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Introducing the next step in Web app development: Google's Native Client originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 13 May 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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