• TechCrunch/GigaOm, Wednesday, December 10, 2008 12:15 PM

Google will soon take Chrome, the Web browser the search giant launched last summer, out of beta, vice president Marissa Mayer announced recently at Le Web 08. The move is significant, TechCrunch says, because Google already has a number of eager customers who can't offer the open source browser until it's out of beta.

With Chrome, Google is essentially trying to redefine the browser around open standards. On Monday, the search giant rolled out a new open source software platform called Native Client, which GigaOm says moves Google "even closer to fulfilling the early promise of a 'web operating system.'" This was one of Microsoft's original fears when Marc Andreessen brought Netscape to prominence over a decade ago: that the browser maker would be able to offer services and features that compete head on with Microsoft's desktop software products. Famously, Bill Gates and co. countered with the scripting language ActiveX and the browser Internet Explorer, which ultimately clobbered Java and Netscape.

Now, Google is offering Native Client as its own scripting language, in the hope that developers will receive it as a "friendlier version" of ActiveX. Native Client allows browsers to run code in the language understood by users' PCs, which means browser-based services will run faster and offer more functionality than they do now. As Mathew Ingram observes, the combination of Native Client, Chrome and Google Gears "makes for something that is awfully close to being a web OS."

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