Aw, why won’t Google let Java have the RIA spotlight ever so briefly? Hot on the very flashy heels of the release of Java FX comes the understated (but still heavily covered in the tech press, coz this is Google we’re talking about) release that vaguely fits into the RIA world. It’s called Native Client, and it’s essentially a tiny, extremely limited OS-within-the-OS that will encapsulate native code written for x86 processors and run it (in theory) on any x86 machine. (Right now it’s good to go on Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu.) There’s both a browser plug-in and a way to run Native Client code standalone, so in that superficial way it’s resembles JavaFX quite closely.In typical Google fashion, Native Client has been released at an extremely early stage of its evolution for developers to experiment with (the package I downloaded to futz with had a 0.1 version number). But, other than fulfilling some Google engineer’s whim, what’s Google getting at with this? Cnet’s headline on the subject — Google’s answer to Java, Flash, Windows: Native Client — implies a certain grandiosity of ambition that might not be too far off the mark. The thing that most interests me is the fact that this is x86 only; Java purists will no doubt scoff at this, but if we’re talking about desktop systems, x86 is the now a near-universal platform, and its the desktop systems that all of these RIA contenders are trying to reach. Technology Industry