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20050127 e enjte janar 27, 2005

Why is Google interested in Java and Mozilla ?

Pourquoi Google s'interesse a Java et Mozilla ? is a very good analysis of the recent Google hiring moves for java and Mozilla engineers. It's in french, but Google is your friend and here's how they would translate it (thanks to the anonymous commenter who posted this link).

Ludovic expresses in very clear terms what I was thinking since a while. Ludo and I were at Netscape together, when the strategy was to make the OS irrelevant by having the browser be the platform for most applications. I guess Netscape was too early in this game, but Google has much more chances to make it work now.

The only point I would add to Ludo's analysis is that I think Google will add java on the client as well, in order to be able to add functionalities to their apps on the fly. If you've ever tried creating an app in Mozilla, you know that all the deep functionality is written in C code, wrapped in XPCOM bindings and accessed from the UI code through javascript. So if you want to add serious services to Mozilla you need to deploy new C libraries with an XPCOM binding. I think Adam Bosworth is going to implement the client side caching/synchronization framework he was talking about when at BEA in their Firefox based browser, but that they will probably add a VM in there, with java-XPCOM bindings (does someone remember the now defunct blackwood project, maybe Google is going to finish the work:-) that will let them provision jars with new functionalities from the network. Then the UI will be written in XUL-javascript. This would be an ironic revival of fortune for java on the client: java on the client, but not for the UI stuff:-)

These are just educated guesses and may prove completely wrong. We'll see. But if you think about it, this was the architecture that Kevin Burton, now chief architect and founder at Rojo, had chosen 2 years ago for his well named Desktop news aggregator NewsMonster.

( Jan 27 2005, 07:28:50 PD PST ) Permalink Comments [3] Chat about it Technorati cosmos Tagsurf It

Comments:

google is you friend http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ludovic.org%2Farchives%2F000283.html&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

Posted by 208.237.173.72 on janar 27, 2005 at 09:47 PD PST #

XUL apps with a client side language more powerful than JS - that's smething I've been looking at too. Personally I was looking at Ruby, though Java could easily play the same role.

Posted by Douglas on janar 27, 2005 at 04:30 MD PST #

Nice follow-up.. Yeah Java on the client side again.. I've been recently more convinced with standalone Java clients apps, but still not with embedded Java in browser pages. I find the interaction between the browser and Java still weak.. But who knows.. If Google can surprise us with Javascript (Google Suggest) why could they not do it with Java.. I would say that for client side technologies, both for Mozilla XUL apps as for Java apps, what would be great is some level of memory and process execution separation in the same toolkit environment.. How can I run an XPI or a Java application for a low additional memory cost if I have already Mozilla or a JVM running and still get a decent level of execution separation when doing so.

Posted by Ludovic Dubost on janar 28, 2005 at 10:36 PD PST #

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