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The company announced Google Chrome OS on its blog, saying lower-end PCs called Netbooks from unnamed manufacturers will include it in the second half of 2010. Linux will run under the covers of the open-source project, but the applications will run on the Web itself.

The move shows just how serious Google is about making the Web into a foundation not just for static pages but for active applications, notably its own such as Google Docs and Gmail. It also opens new competition with Microsoft and, potentially, a new reason for antitrust regulators to pay close attention to Google's moves.

In short, Google is aiming to render desktop software irrelevant. To thwart them, Microsoft needs Windows to do things that a browser can't--or do the same things significantly better.

Interestingly, if Microsoft wants some tips on how to do this, it might want to look toward Apple. Essentially, this has been Apple's challenge all along: make the Mac experience better enough than a generic PC that it is worth the added cost.

Google has a long history of tracking user activity, and the introduction of its Chrome operating system later this year is sure to follow suit. While we know that it's being built off of Linux, one big thing we don't know is how its terms of service will differ from those found in other Google products, and what kinds of user data it will be collecting. Based on the company's track record of watching and monetizing user data, it could track anything from the applications you're using, to all the information that's coming in and out of your computer.
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Back in the day, Netbooks ran Linux and packed solid-state drives. But Windows XP and big hard disk drives have prevailed.

Toshiba's mini NB200 does not offer a solid-state drive option in featured configurations nor Linux

The early Asus Eee PCs--which almost single-handedly created the Netbook market--came with a Linux operating system and small-capacity solid-state "flash" drives ranging from 2GB to 8GB. Early Acer Aspire Netbooks were also offered with Linux and a solid-state drive.

Those devices bore little resemblance to PC laptops. The Eee PC was a tiny, stripped-to-the-bone device that required minimalist hardware to run an efficient Linux OS. (Will a wave of Google Chrome OS-based devices revive the minimalist Netbook next year?)

Fast forward to today: Windows XP rules, with a Netbook-specific Windows 7 on the way. And a glance at the Netbook lineups from any top PC maker--including Hewlett-Packard, Acer, and Toshiba--reveals few, if any, Linux offerings and equally few solid-state drive options.

Rather, beefy hardware configurations sporting 160GB hard disk drives and as much as 2GB of memory are the norm.

And a report from market researcher iSuppli says higher prices for flash memory chips may undermine high-capacity SSDs in mainstream laptops too.

Average pricing for widely used 16-gigabit flash chips rose to $4.10 in the second quarter of 2009, a steep 127.8 percent increase from $1.80 in the fourth quarter of 2008, said Michael Yang, senior analyst for mobile and emerging memories at iSuppli, in a report released Wednesday.

Prices will inevitably come down again but so will the cost-per-gigabyte of hard disk drives. Because of the distinct performance advantages over hard disks, solid-state drives are not going away, but they won't displace hard drives as the standard for storage in PCs anytime soon.

As for Linux, time will tell if Netbooks return to their roots with Google's Android and/or the Chrome OS next year.

Venture capitalists are the latest group showing more confidence in an economic recovery that will revive business, according to a quarterly survey released Thursday.

For the second quarter, the Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index showed an uptick, hitting 3.37 on a 5-point scale, up from the previous quarter's mark of 3.03. This is the second consecutive rise since the index dropped to a five-year low in the fourth quarter of 2008.

(Credit: Mark V. Cannice, Ph.D., University of San Francisco)

Based on an ongoing survey of San Francisco Bay Area venture capitalists, the index measures their confidence level in the market for initial public offerings and entrepreneurs over the next 6 to 18 months.

A report of the latest results from the June survey of 42 venture capitalists was released by its author Mark Cannice, associate professor with the University of San Francisco School of Business and Professional Studies.

"Venture capitalists expect that the worst of the financial crisis is behind us," said Cannice in his report. "While the effects of the financial market disruption on the venture industry will linger for some time, most VCs observed an increasingly determined and talented pool of entrepreneurs and a continuing march of innovation."

Although IPO funding has been scarce, the second quarter was boosted by the reopening of the market for venture-backed firms after two down quarters, noted Cannice. VCs believe their underlying business model is recovering.

Among the VCs questioned for the survey, Sandy Miller of Institutional Venture Partners said: "There has been a stabilization in the environment generally in the last two months...While we are by no means out of the woods, the tone for both entrepreneurs and investors has improved."

Kurt Keilhacker of TechFund Capital added: "There are definite signs of stabilization and hints of increased activity, especially in clean-energy sectors. Innovation is not dependent on a certain unemployment rate or stock index. Rather, innovation is often catalyzed by times of uncertainty."

Cannice noted that the lack of money has forced venture capitalists to identify and work with only the "most resilient and creative entrepreneurs." But this has instilled a sense of efficiency in these new firms, which should help them sustain over the longer haul.

VC Bill Byun of Samsung Ventures said: "In today's environment, when I meet a team of start-ups with compelling business ideas, I witness more than passion. I hear hunger to succeed and solve real problems versus testing out a business concept with an investor." Echoing that sentiment, Jim Marshall of Selby Ventures added, "Times like these truly separate the real entrepreneurs from the 'get rich quick' folks."

In summing up his findings, Cannice said in his report: "When the public capital markets right themselves fully, there will exist a healthy supply of innovative and efficient venture-backed enterprises ready to refresh their ranks."

The full report of the June survey is available at the USF Entrepreneurship Program Web site.

(Credit: Mozilla)

Mozilla Labs has set up the Open Web Tools Directory, a bid to build a comprehensive list of the open-source developer tools available.

The open-source browser project issued a call this week to the programmer community to help with the construction of the new central database.

"As we've explored different tools we could create here as part of the Developer Tools Lab, we've come to the opinion that in addition to creating new tools, one of the best things we could do is help developers understand the broad universe of tools that already exist and expose some of the fantastic and amazing work that's being done," Ben Galbraith, a member of Mozilla Labs Developer Tools team, said in a blog post.

This new repository comes in response to what Mozilla says is a lack of any centralized and navigable list of open-source tools. The Open Web Tools Directory site features a search box with Design, Code, Debug, Test, Deploy and Docs filters to help direct programmers to the applications most suited to their needs.

"It turns out that keeping up with all the development in this space is really difficult--even for folks like us who have been tracking it every day for years," Galbraith said. "We're looking forward to evolving the directory and working with the Web community to make it a vibrant resource for discovering and tracking the Web's amazing tools universe."

The index is laid out in what Galbraith describes as a "space" theme, with scattered thumbnails rather than a listing. Developers interested in reviewing that index of tools will need a browser with Canvas (the part of HTML5 that allows dynamic rendering of bitmap images) to view the content, such as Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, Chrome 2, or Opera 9. However, Mozilla has also provided a more accessible version of the directory with screen reader support and for browsers without Canvas support.

Developers interested in helping to expand the Open Web Tools Directory can use the site's data entry form to submit tool suggestions. Mozilla Labs is looking to the community to "fill up the directory with the hundreds or thousands of items" that they themselves have missed, Galbraith said.

Mozilla will review all submissions before they are added to the live site. The organization is also exploring longer-term concepts for augmenting the database, such as social participation features to enable tools to be ranked and commented on by community members.

Adrian Bridgwater of ZDNet UK reported from London.

The fight to win Data Domain is over.

EMC and Data Domain announced Wednesday that the two have entered a definitive merger agreement. EMC will buy Data Domain for $33.50 a share in cash, a deal worth $2.1 billion.

Data Domain's board said it determined that EMC's offer was "advisable, fair to and in the best interests of Data Domain and its stockholders." The board is recommending that Data Domain investors tender their shares to EMC.

EMC was determined to buy Data Domain by continually outbidding NetApp over the past five weeks and is now focused on the next steps.

"We look forward to bringing Data Domain together with EMC to form a powerful force in next-generation disk-based backup and archive," EMC CEO Joe Tucci said in a statement. "I have tremendous respect for Data Domain's people, technology and business, and anticipate great things ahead for our respective companies, our customers and partners."

NetApp said it would not change its bid for Data Domain and that the two companies have ended their merger agreement. Data Domain also canceled the special stockholder meeting set for August 14, at which time investors were to vote on the NetApp proposal.

"NetApp applies a disciplined approach to acquisitions, ones focused intently on creating long-term value for our stockholders," Dan Warmenhoven, NetApp's CEO, said in a statement. "We therefore cannot justify engaging in an increasingly expensive and dilutive bidding war that would diminish the deal's strategic and financial benefits."

NetApp gets a concession prize, though--a $57 million break-up fee from Data Domain.

The bidding war was brief but active. On May 20, NetApp bid $25 a share to acquire Data Domain in a stock and cash deal worth $1.5 billion. In early June, EMC upped the ante with a $30-per-share cash offer, forcing NetApp to boost its bid to match. However, EMC promoted its deal as superior because it didn't contain some of the contingencies of NetApp's proposal.

Data Domain seemed intent on choosing the NetApp bid, prompting a couple of lawsuits against the company over its failure to consider EMC's offer.

Finally, on Monday EMC upped its price to $33.50 per share, which proved to be the winning bid.

Google is gearing up for an assault next year on Microsoft's dominance in PC operating systems, yet the companies that would have to be complicit in the battle have little to say about it.

Judging by their public reactions to Google's news, much of the top tier of consumer PC makers appear caught off guard by Google's announcement Tuesday of Chrome OS, an open-source operating system the company is preparing for launch in 2010. Google specifically noted in its announcement that its operating system would be lightweight enough to work on Netbooks, low-cost mini laptops that almost all PC makers have flocked to in the past year. According to a person familiar with the operating system, Google is talking to Asus, Lenovo, as well as other original equipment manufacturers, and chipset makers about using Chrome OS.

Neither Asus nor Lenovo responded to requests for comment.

It makes sense that Google would target Asus. It's the pioneer of the Netbook movement and dominates the market. But there are other potential partners too, whose names have not come up yet: Acer and MSI. Along with Asus, they've been happy to cut Microsoft at least partly out of the equation of building a computer. The three have led the charge in Netbooks, and while they have offered versions with Windows XP, they also were early to make Linux versions available. Adding Chrome OS as an option would make sense.

But both Hewlett-Packard and Dell, who account for 35 percent of computers sold worldwide, had mostly nothing to say about Chrome OS.

Will Netbook makers flock to Chrome OS?

(Credit: Acer)

HP said that while it is "studying Chrome," it had no comment on whether it would incorporate it into forthcoming Netbook models, or any other HP computers.

"HP wants to understand all the OS choices in the marketplace that may be used by its competitors, and remains open to considering various approaches to meet its own customer needs," company spokeswoman Marlene Somsak said in a statement Wednesday.

Dell was equally noncommittal. "Dell constantly assesses new technologies as part of managing our product development process and for consideration in future products," said spokeswoman Anne Camden.

Of course they do. But a Google OS could completely change the long-established process of putting together a consumer PC and would totally change how it is priced. Yet neither of the two giants of the industry have a comment. Acer, which is the fastest-growing PC maker right now, said it "had no answer" yet.

Reading between the lines, it appears the top three hardware vendors have little or no relationship with the search and online advertising giant. But if Google plans to make inroads into Netbooks and eventually notebooks, that will have to change very soon. Every consumer desktop and notebook, and most Netbooks today (excluding computers from Apple) are designed to run Windows. Microsoft has deep hooks in the manufacturers' design and engineering processes, and the hardware companies' marketing and product launch cycles always take Microsoft's plans into account.

In a recent and so-far relatively obscure video, VMware CEO Paul Maritz offers, at times, a sharp critique of the Intel chip architecture and the challenges of getting it into cell phones.

VMware CEO Paul Maritz

(Credit: EMC)

At the TiEcon 2009 conference in mid-May, Maritz gave a brief oral history of the Intel x86 chip architecture. He noted its shortcomings and the challenges presented by ARM, the chip design that powers most of the world's cell phones and will power Netbooks running on Google's just-announced Chrome operating system.

The video has been made available by TechPulse360.

"Consumer devices came along and there was one problem with the x86 instruction set. All of that complexity in there, accumulated over the years, meant it's a power hog. It loves electricity," he said in the video, referring to Intel's x86 architecture, which virtually all PCs use today.

Maritz--who worked for five years as a software and tools developer at Intel before spending 14 years as a top-level executive at Microsoft and then joining VMWare a year ago--continued: "In consumer devices like phones you can't have that. Battery life becomes paramount," he said.

Maritz described how Intel experimented with the ARM processor architecture and bought a license "for a much simpler microprocessor," referring to Intel's development of the StrongARM architecture, which eventually became a designed called XScale.

Subsequently, Intel decided to get out of the business, according to Maritz's depiction, because the devices were "low-end, low-power, low-profit." Here Maritz is referring to Intel's XScale business, which was sold to Marvell Technology in 2006.

Maritz continued, describing how Intel wanted to get back to its roots: "high performance, complex microprocessors." Then, Intel realized, according to Maritz, that it had to get back into that market: "This ARM thing is a real problem, we're going to have to go back into that space."

In response to the video, an Intel representative said: "Paul Maritz is not privy to all of Intel's future product plans."

Note: Though the video is from May, it did not come to my attention until very recently. I think the topic is important enough to bring up now because Maritz is a high-profile CEO at a large company that builds software that runs on Intel processors and because he's speaking about one of Intel's greatest challenges.

Hit by the economic downturn and fluctuating exchange rates, worldwide IT spending is expected to drop 6 percent this year, according to a new Gartner report.

Spending will likely settle in at $3.2 trillion for 2009, compared with $3.4 trillion in 2008. Last year, IT spending had actually surged by 6.2 percent over 2007.

Due to the ongoing recession, the projected 6 percent spending decline is greater than Gartner's original forecast of a 3.8 percent drop, which the firm made in March.

"While the global economic downturn shows signs of easing, this year IT budgets are still being cut, and consumers will need a lot more persuading before they can feel confident enough to loosen their purse strings," Richard Gordon, head of global forecasting at Gartner, said in a statement Tuesday.

This year's spending decline touches all four major IT segments tracked by Gartner--hardware, software, IT services, and telecommunications. Hardware spending will see the sharpest drop at 16.3 percent, while software spending will ease down only 1.6 percent.

For comparison, Gartner noted, a drop in all four segments did not occur during the last major downturn in 2001.

As the global economy revives, Gartner believes IT spending will shoot up 2.3 percent next year. Overall, Gartner expects IT spending to grow annually at a weak 1.9 percent rate from 2008 through 2013.

Google's revelation that it will create its own operating system will bring just one reaction from operating system enthusiasts worldwide.

"Not another Linux distribution," they'll cry.

They'll say this because if there is one problem that the Linux and open-source community has suffered repeatedly over the past two decades, it's been fragmentation.

It was bad enough that the Unix operating system fragmented repeatedly through the 1980s and 1990s. Systems administrators (like myself, earlier this decade) were forced to learn several different platforms: Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, FreeBSD...the list was always growing longer.

But the hojillion different directions Linux has taken over the past several decades has even dwarfed that problem. Depending on what part of the world you live in, odds are that you (and sometimes the company you work for) have personally switched among different Linux distributions several times over the past decade, as one or the other gained prominence.

Personally, I started off using Red Hat, which split off into the official Red Hat version and a community edition dubbed Fedora. I toyed with Mandriva and Suse for a while, before settling on Slackware for some years, and then moving to Debian. Throughout that time, I've had to learn quite a few different package management, configuration, boot, and window management systems.

Of course, I have also used a variety of Microsoft operating systems and Apple's more focused Mac OS X and its predecessors.

Now, over the past few years, some of us had begun to believe that we could see a bright light forming at the end of that confused and heterogeneous tunnel. Out of the ferocious Linux distribution wars, one contender has emerged with the seeming strength to take on the rest--at least when it comes to the Linux desktop platform.

I speak, of course, of Ubuntu.

Mark Shuttleworth's juggernaut has, over the past few years, blasted through the Linux community like he blasted into space, drawing in all like some kind of monstrous black hole.

If you attend conferences like Linux.conf.au these days, where you used to see Debian and Slackware die-hards, you'll see a massive wave of Linux laptops proudly sporting Ubuntu paraphernalia. I switched the Linux half of my home desktop PC to Ubuntu four years ago, and my media center followed this year, as I said goodbye finally to the venerable Windows XP.

The growing dominance of Ubuntu (at least on the desktop, the server room seems to have been won by Red Hat) has delivered the Linux community a serious advantage in its ongoing war against the incumbent Windows and Apple platforms because of its ability to give software developers a single platform to concentrate on and polish to a degree not seen previously.

In this context, Google's decision to create its own Linux distribution and splinter the Linux community decisively once again can only be seen as foolhardy and self-obsessive.

Instead of treading its own path, Google should have sought to leverage the stellar work already carried out by Shuttleworth and his band of merry coders and tied its horse to the Ubuntu cart.

If Google truly wants to design a new "windowing system on top of a Linux kernel," there should be nothing to stop the search giant from collaborating openly with the best in the business. I'm sure Linus Torvalds would have something strongly worded to say about Google's plans to "completely redesign" the underlying security architecture of Linux.

There's no doubt Google has made moves in this direction with its pledge to open-source Chrome OS, the same way it did with several previous projects: the Chrome browser itself and its Android mobile OS.

But doubts still remain about those projects also. For example, where do they fit in between true open-source projects, maintained and supported by the community, and to what extent are they extensions of Google's online advertising empire?

Android is a great mobile operating system, second only to Apple's iPhone platform. But Google still controls most aspects of Android's development. Also, anyone using Android would have no doubt that the operating system ties in very nicely with Google's cloud offerings (for example, Gmail). But things are a lot trickier if you prefer Windows Live or other rival systems.

Chrome too, is a great browser that I use for much of my daily needs. But it's mainly still in Google's hands, and so those of us who prefer true competition to exist in the browser world take great comfort from the fact that Mozilla Firefox is completely independent and not pushing anyone's agenda.

Who are you going to trust and believe in? The noncommercial Ubuntu Foundation (and wider project), which has developed an open-source operating system second to none and virtually ended the Linux distribution wars? Or Google, which also makes free products (well, mostly) and packages advertising in (sometimes)?

You can e-mail Torvalds or Shuttleworth directly and get answers to your Linux questions, sometimes within minutes or hours. Try that with whoever is in charge of Android or Chrome development.

Google makes great products. But it's currently trying to tread a nice middle ground between completely embracing the open-source community and keeping control over software it has developed. That's an impossible path to walk and one that leaves it open to being criticized for the same sort of arrogance that operating system vendors have been accused of for decades.

Renai LeMay of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

XHTML 2, we hardly knew you.

XHTML 2, a technology intended to build a more powerful Web from the ground up, met a quiet end last week, spotlighting the difficulties of standardization in a fast-moving Internet. Introduced in 2002, XHTML 2 was a centerpiece of standards work at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

But incompatibility with the existing Web and a direction at odds with Web developers' desires doomed it to a slow demise. On Thursday, after a long reconciliation with browser makers who'd struck off in a different direction, the W3C announced that it will wind down development of XHTML 2 this year.

Ultimately, Web browser makers had the upper hand in charting the Web's future.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Instead, the group will channel those resources into standardizing what the browser makers have been toiling on all these years: HTML 5, a sprawling collection of new features to improve the present Hypertext Markup Language. Although elements of XHTML 2 will live on in HTML 5, overall, the browser makers prevailed.

"XHTML 2 was a beautiful specification of philosophical purity that had absolutely no resemblance to the real world," said Bruce Lawson, HTML 5 evangelist for browser maker Opera.

So what went wrong? In short, the Web has many masters, but the ones with final say over its nature are those who build it page by page, not the standards group trying to create a new foundation.

XHTML 2 was designed to reform the Web as a medium for publishing documents, but the developers--and the browser makers who listened closely to those developers--instead wanted a platform for interactive applications. And while that direction prevailed, its incarnation in HTML 5 faces its own set of challenges now.

The consensus for HTML 5 support has been building for years, and the W3C already had been increasing its involvement in its standardization well before it decided to put an end to much of the competing XHTML 2 standard. Although the HTML-XHTML split has been fractious at times, there's inescapable tension between standards groups trying to chart the future and vendors whose products relate to those standards.

"I will not say it's been the smoothest way of doing things, but it's not an unnatural way for things to proceed," said Mike Smith, leader of HTML work at W3C, speaking of the reconciliation process that rejuvenated the W3C's HTML work. "Vendors are the ones who drive innovation on the Web for the most part."

Why XHTML?
So if it's so clear today that HTML 5 is the way to go, why was so much energy, time, and research invested in XHTML 2? It was an attempt start afresh without HTML's shortcomings.

The X in XHTML stands for XML, which in turn stands for Extensible Markup Language. XML is a broad technology that uses a strict set of tags to label different types of content in a document, and XHTML was engineered specifically for the Web. XHTML brought rigor to the loosey-goosey and slap-dash world of HTML, and it would have permitted developers to employ a broader range of computing engines called parsers to digest and process the XML, Smith said.

XHTML "was a cleaner and better-architected version of HTML," Smith said. And in its earlier years, it had support. "At the time when XHTML 2 was first conceived and specified in the early drafts, most everybody thought it was a good idea. A lot of people in hindsight want to look back at it now and make the claim that they knew it wasn't going to have success," Smith said.

XHTML 2.0 made it to working draft stage, but only parts of the specification will live on in HTML 5.

One example of its utility is the tight coupling of textual information with a graphs encoded with the SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics format, Smith said. Another advantage was better browsing with the limited abilities of mobile phones.

One of the big problems with XHTML 2 was that it wasn't backwards compatible, though. Not only could it not be used to display existing Web pages, but Web browsers had to be expanded with an entirely new engine for handling the XML. Notably, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the dominant browser by far, couldn't handle XHTML on its own.

Another problem was that there was plenty of demand for improvements to HTML, which W3C had declared finished with version 4.01 in 1999.

"People were so focused on XHTML 2 that they were substantially less interested in modifying the application model and introducing new features to HTML that developers were clamoring for," said Arun Ranganathan, standards evangelist for Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser. "We felt the standards going on at the time...were disconnected from a large majority of developers.

Microsoft agrees with its browser rival.

"We've never heard a strong request from our developer audience and customers for XHTML 2," said Amy Barzdukas, general manager for IE.

Enter WHATWG
One crucial moment came five years ago when Opera and Mozilla representatives showed the W3C an idea called WebForms for improving HTML. "We jointly presented this paper to W3C, who rejected it," Lawson said.

Mozilla's Brendan Eich and Opera's Ian Hickson were displeased with how things went. "The best way to help the Web is to incrementally improve the existing web standards," concluded Eich, founder of the JavaScript Web programming language, after the meeting in a blog post.

Eich also announced there an Opera and Mozilla plan to take that evolutionary route. They launched an open e-mail list called WHATWG, short for Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group. Apple, which offers its own Safari browser, soon began participating, too.

"It became a de facto standards organization without the formality of W3C. It's where we went to figure out what the future of the Web was," Ranganathan said.

Eventually, the Web-application direction won over the W3C. "Some things are clearer with hindsight of several years. It is necessary to evolve HTML incrementally," said Web founder and W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee said in 2006.

But Berners-Lee at the time also maintained the commitment to the "well-formed," more rigorous XML-based future: "It is important to maintain HTML incrementally, as well as continuing a transition to well-formed world, and developing more power in that world."

In practice, the W3C world and WHATWG world involve many of the same people. That probably eased the reconciliation to the current state, where WHATWG and W3C operate simultaneously, the first more informal and the second with more careful handling of intellectual property concerns.

Ultimately, HTML carried the day. What began with interest in more sophisticated Web sites such as eBay blossomed with the arrival of Ajax, which used JavaScript to build more sophisticated Web-based applications. And Web applications weren't just theoretical ideas.

"When Gmail and Google Maps and Ajax came along, it became really clear we needed a new set of technologies that made it easier to make those kinds of applications," Smith said.

The transition culminated with W3C's bare-bones news last week: "Today the director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will not be renewed. By doing so, and by increasing resources in the HTML Working Group, W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C's position regarding the future of HTML."

Some features of XHTML 2 will be built into HTML 5, so the XHTML 2 work won't have been for naught, assuming a critical mass of browser makers do in fact include the necessary XML parser along the HTML parser.

HTML 5: no walk in the park
Though the W3C-WHATWG dust has mostly settled, the standard is far from finished, and indeed looks a long way off.

The present approach involves a give and take between browser makers trying out new features and the standards group codifying them. Features can't make it to the ultimate W3C state, "final recommendation," until at least two browsers support the feature compatibly, Smith said.

In practice, that means adventurous Web developers who choose to support the new technologies in effect are blessing them even though the technology might well change.

HTML 5 elements came from all over. Canvas, which involves two-dimensional graphics, began at Apple's Safari and now has won over Opera, Firefox, and Google's Chrome. ContentEditable, which lets Web pages be edited in place, came from Microsoft. Google now is working on a faster communication feature called Web Sockets. Programmers for WebKit, the open-source project underlying Safari, are developing DataGrid, which brings spreadsheet-like tables with sorting and editing to Web pages.

"The speed of the web is continuing to pick up in general," Barzdukas said. HTML 5 feature support figures prominently in the browser sales pitches from Google and from Mozilla, with its "upgrade the Web" tag line for Firefox 3.5.

Actual standardization, though, remains distant. Mozilla's Ranganathan hopes for drafts of some HTML 5 elements this year and a draft of the full specification in 2010.

The HTML 5 built-in video situation is illustrative. Hickson, the HTML 5 editor and now Google employee, posted a lament about HTML 5 video last week because browser makers don't agree on whether to support the patent-free Ogg Theora format, preferred by Opera and Mozilla, or the commercially popular H.264 format, preferred by Google and Apple. The upshot for now: HTML 5 is trying to standardize video but doesn't specify which format to be used.

That pace of HTML 5 standardization important, given the importance Microsoft places on supporting actual standards and the company's commanding market share.

"The support of ratified standards (that Web developers) can use is something that we are extremely supportive of," Barzdukas said. "In some cases, it can be premature to start claiming support for standards that are not yet in fact standards."