Not about Adobe AIR, or Google Docs. But Google Native client, an attempt, similar to them ol’ Java applets that just got released and I’m sure the best brains at Microsoft are dissecting line by line to see how it works (right? right?) . Still in testing, but coming up fast on the horizon, here comes another challenge for Microsoft’s domination of the client desktop market.

Traditionally, Microsoft Office’s strength has not only been the fact that its very deep in terms of features and abilities, but also the fact that you can double click and open a 4MB word or excel file in a matter of seconds, and open something like change tracking without everything crashing. (and there are plenty universities, students, financial professionals, you name it, who have that requirement) . 

Google Docs as yet cannot match this, and one of the reasons I dont take it seriously for my daily work is the same, I have way too many complex excel sheets, and word documents with fine formatting that Google Docs cannot match or open yet. I like the fact that its web based, but thats secondary to me compared to ease of opening, editing saving files. I have a laptop, I backup alot, and I dont need the ‘cloud’ so much (yet!). Adobe AIR, while promising, is still not built to utilize the client desktop’s resources, (like Google wants to) has only as yet released some small (but very useful) apps.

So here comes Google Native Client, aka another approach to browser-launched client side computing , something that SUN tried with Java applets and failed miserably at. In fact, many good web coding practices completely disallow the use of Java applets now. So will Google Native Client be any different? Or will it be the Killer app that rides in on Chrome and lets you use Google docs much like you use Microsoft Office today?

I’m sure alot of people at Redmond right now are already testing this theory out. If Google does succeed, in a few years everyone on this side of the planet could go from web 2.0 coding to porting alot of traditional windows applications to Native client (thats a pipedream, is it not?)

Google has asked the public and companies to help build up the Native Client code and given today’s global connectivity, which was not as pervasive during the Java applet era, they might even be successful, where SUN failed.

Native Client link : http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/12/native-client-technology-for-running.html

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