Chrome Version: 4.0.220.1, which was released last Friday, ihas Native Client technology as a built-in feature, giving the browser improved processing power to run Web apps. And play Quake!
Google has been working for while on Native Client Technology, or NaCi as the developers fondly call it. If they can get it to work, NaCi will make it possible to run webapps as if they were apps built into your computer’s browser.
That would be great news for Google, because then their Google Docs could finally take on Microsoft Office
This would be a good way for Google to monetize Chrome, it apparently wants everything running in the cloud and thereby promote all its own web apps. Pretty neat huh!
It could be good for you&me as well, as web apps should make it easier to share stuff, for instance work related documents. Or, more importantly, play webgames without losing performance!
Some Google guys demonstrated how their Native Client technology can let a game like Quake to run in a browser window, with hardly any performance loss noticable. You want to know exactly how that’s done? Check out this post I still don’t completely get it, but I think the long and the short of it is that NaCi is pretty cool!
