Google ramping up Java, Predictions…
August 24th, 2004There is good deal of speculation about Google hiring as many top Java developers they can get to sign on the dotted line. One can only wonder what they could have in store. If I had a top notch Java development team and all that Google power at my disposal I would...
Hybrid Browser
First I would create a powerful hybrid browser based on Java technology and the WebCore Framework to allow for a rich user experience regardless of the platform. Right now the iTunes application is an example of a hybrid client. Currently WebCore is only on MacOS X but it is based on KHTML so leveraging the library to display web standard documents should require minimal work. The development team would just need to link the C++ codebase into Java similar to what is done with JDIC does with MSIE on Windows and Mozilla for Linux and MacOS X. With a hybrid browser they could implement interfaces to consume semantic content similar to RSS feeds, but for a wider range of uses.
Open IM
The chat world is a pain and generally you send messages via email or one of many competing and incompatible chat protcols. Ideally Google would use the recently standardized Jabber Protocol to create a friendly implementation which would integrate magically with their Gmail service as well as the above hybrid browser. Realtime notifications of events happening in a remote location (office, home, etc) would be a great use of IM beyond basic chat.
Plugins
As a part of producing a couple of powerful network applications Google should create a simple plugin interface to allow for the extension of these software packages to allow for growth beyond their originally vision. The Eclipse Platform as well as the Apache Web Server are prime examples of open architectures which are heavily supported and popular due to pluggable interfaces. Going forward with these resources I see a very bright future for Google and their users.
August 30th, 2004 at 5:53 pm
iTunes may not be what you think it is:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2004_06.html#005666
August 30th, 2004 at 6:31 pm
I guess I just assumed it was using WebKit since that just makes sense, but I can see iTunes screens do more than what a web page would do. Maybe it is some kind of XML rendering implementation. But my point still is the same, a browser with plugins is just a powerful application. Firefox/Mozilla can do many things with XPCOM, but Java plugins would provide a much richer framework than just XPCOM.
August 31st, 2004 at 12:27 pm
Cool topic. If I may add some speculations:
a) 'google' your hard drive application. Now, the G hasn't been too good when it comes to cross-platform apps (the IE toolbar), but using Java may allow them some freedom from the vicissitudes of Microsoft -- and you know M$ is gunning for them.
b) tools for developers. M$'s great success is at least partially built on giving developers what they want: great tools. As you suggested with Eclipse, perhaps the idea is too build easy-to-use tools. For instance to build custom apps which hook into google web services.
c) file sharing. 'google your peers'. They could increase their power by making an app that becomes THE way to transfer files and share/search data.
d) extend the google appliance. This is really speculative, but what about extending the search engine to run second-order stuff on a distributed farm of perhaps millions of volunteer PC's? For instance, crunching through indeces to improve the results of a particular topic, weed out page rank abusers, etc.