Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O - O'Reilly Radar

21 Sep 09

Perrine GROSSET

May 27
2009

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Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O
by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 64
"Never underestimate the web," says Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra in his keynote at Google I/O this morning. He goes on to tell the story of a meeting he remembers when he was VP of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft five years ago. "We believed that web apps would never rival desktop apps. There was this small company called Keyhole, which made this most fantastic geo-visualization software for Windows. This was the kind of software we always used to prove to ourselves that there were things that could never be done on the web." A few months later, Google acquired Keyhole, and shortly thereafter released Google Maps with satellite view.
"We knew then that the web had won," he said. "What was once thought impossible is now commonplace."
Google doesn't want to repeat that mistake, and as a result, he said, "we're betting big on HTML 5."
Vic pointed out that the rate of browser innovation is accelerating, with new browser releases nearly every other month. The slide below, from early in Vic's talk, shows the progress towards the level of UI functionality found in desktop apps through adoption of HTML 5 features in browsers. This looks like one of Clayton Christensen's classic "disruptive innovation vs sustaining innovation" graphs. It's also fascinating to see how mobile browsers are in the forefront of the innovation.

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11 Jun 09

Joelle Nebbe-Mornod

01 Jun 09

Guillermo Santamaria

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29 May 09

Thieme Hennis

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Josh Mahoney

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Kenyth Zeng

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Google doesn't want to repeat that mistake, and as a result, he said, "we're betting big on HTML 5."
new browser releases nearly every other month.
8 more annotations...
- This looks like one of Clayton Christensen's classic "disruptive innovation vs sustaining innovation" graphs
- five key next-generation features
- Mozilla's BeSpin. Bespin is an extensible code editor with an interface so rich that it's hard to believe it was written entirely in Javascript and HTML.
- this YouTube demo. (As a special bonus, the video is demonstrating the power of O3D, an open source 3D rendering API for the browser.)
- When I checked in with my editors at O'Reilly, the general consensus was that HTML 5 isn't going to be ready till 2010
- We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code."
- The web has not seen this level of transformation, this level of acceleration, in the past ten years.

28 May 09

Jose Manuel Prieto

html5

Alex MIkhalev

Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O

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Gary Edwards

What a loaded statement. This was at the beginning of Google I/O. Incredibly, the rest of the show proved their point. Google backed up all the grand assertions with running code and developer affirmations. Incredible. Here's a taste:

<i>...Google, Mozilla, and Palm gave us all a big whack upside the head this morning. As Shakespeare said, "The hot blood leaps over the cold decree." The technology is here even if the standards committees haven't caught up. Developers are taking notice of these new features, and aren't waiting for formal approval. That's as it should be. As Dave Clark described the philosophy of the IETF with regard to internet standardization, "We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code."
<br>
Support by four major browsers adds up to "rough consensus" in my book. We're seeing running code at Google I/O, and I'd imagine the 4000 developers in attendance will soon be producing a lot more. So I think we're off to the races. As Vic said to me in an interview yesterday morning, "The web has not seen this level of transformation, this level of acceleration, in the past ten years."</i>

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David Lafon

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Krishnan Subramanian

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Kali Sana

While the entire HTML 5 standard is years or more from adoption, there are many powerful features available in browsers today. In fact, five key next-generation features are already available in the latest (sometimes experimental) browser builds from Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Google Chrome.

raman srinivasan

Never underestimate the web," says Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra in his keynote at Google I/O this morning. He goes on to tell the story of a meeting he remembers when he was VP of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft five years ago. "We believed that web apps would never rival desktop apps. There was this small company called Keyhole, which made this most fantastic geo-visualization software for Windows. This was the kind of software we always used to prove to ourselves that there were things that could never be done on the web." A few months later, Google acquired Keyhole, and shortly thereafter released Google Maps with satellite view.

"We knew then that the web had won," he said. "What was once thought impossible is now commonplace."

Google doesn't want to repeat that mistake, and as a result, he said, "we're betting big on HTML 5."

Vic pointed out that the rate of browser innovation is accelerating, with new browser releases nearly every other month. The slide below, from early in Vic's talk, shows the progress towards the level of UI functionality found in desktop apps through adoption of HTML 5 features in browsers. This looks like one of Clayton Christensen's classic "disruptive innovation vs sustaining innovation" graphs. It's also fascinating to see how mobile browsers are in the forefront of the innovation.

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