When Is a Browser Not a Browser? When it's a Gazelle.
Microsoft Research has published a really interesting paper (<http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/gazelle-062909.aspx>) discussing the increased adoption of web based applications (be they cloud services or service applications like internet banking).
"Everyone accepts that applications need to run on operating systems,” Wang says. “However, this has not been the case for Web applications; they depend on browsers to render pages and handle computing resources. Yet browsers have never been constructed to be operating systems. Principals are allowed to coexist within the same process or protection domain, and resource management is largely non-existent.”
In the Gazelle model, the browser-based OS, typically called the browser kernel, protects principals from one another and from the host machine by exclusively managing access to computer resources, enforcing policies, handling interprincipal communications, and providing consistent, systematic access to computing devices.
Mary-Jo Foley sums up the impact of the work that Microsoft Research do, very well below.
It’s worth reiterating that Microsoft hasn’t said when, how or if it plans to commercialize Gazelle. It’s not accurate to call Gazelle the next version of Internet Explorer (or replacement for IE) or a future iteration of Windows. For now, it’s a Microsoft Research project only. (But most Microsoft Research projects do end up ultimately becoming commercialized in some way, often times years after they first debut.)
Taken from http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=3231.
Gazelle could have a strong impact of future browser development Microsoft. Then again ...
