At the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco this week, the search giant announced a new version of its Web development kit and opened up its hosted Google App Engine to more developers.
Web applications written with Google Web Toolkit 1.5, which now supports Java 5, will run 1.2 to two times faster, said Bruce Johnson, Google’s engineering manager. The toolkit is a step toward making the Web — not Windows, Mac or Linux — the computing layer that developers are concerned with.
“There’s no question any more whether you’re going to target the browser or a desktop app,” Johnson said. “For almost any new exciting app, you’re going to target the browser.”
For a certain class of programs, Johnson said, the Web is “already better than what you can do on the desktop.” He added: “For extremely low-latency applications, like video editing, I think we’re still a couple years out.”
Such statements are nothing less than a shot across Microsoft’s bow — and while establishing the Web as a competitor to Windows is still an uphill battle, Google should not be underestimated here, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group.
“There is little doubt the browser is the best common denominator for new applications,” Enderle said, “but the problem is that most people don’t have network connections that are fast enough to live on it.” That kind of connectivity likely won’t come for a decade, which gives Microsoft a sizable window of time to fight back, he added.
“This is still Microsoft’s market to lose, but to beat Google they have to lead and not follow to this new capability — and they have lost focus on their core defenses to this attack: Windows, Office and IE,” Enderle said. “Google can’t do this without…