Google this afternoon unveiled a new project called Native Client that promises to let Web-based programs access far more computational power on PCs and other computers than they do today. The company cautions that the project is still in the early stages, and it's asking for help from developers and security researchers to address some core challenges.

I'm still sifting through the accompanying documentation. But at a basic level, the project seems to raise again an issue that has repeatedly dogged Microsoft Windows in the Internet age: As Web-based programs become more powerful -- making the browser a more functional platform for applications -- a person's choice of operating system becomes less and less relevant.

Here's the example cited in the Google blog post ...

For example, imagine that you run a photo-sharing website and want to let your users touch up their photos without leaving your site. Today, you could provide this feature using a combination of JavaScript and server side processing. This approach, however, would cause huge amounts of image data to be transferred between browser and the server, leading to an experience that would probably be painfully slow for users who just want to make a few simple changes. With the ability to seamlessly run native code on the user's machine, you could instead perform the actual image processing on the desktop CPU, resulting in a much more responsive application by minimizing data transfer and latency.

At that point, how much more value does a traditional PC-based photo-editing program offer for the average user?

Windows rose to dominance based largely on the fact that so many applications were written for it. People have traditionally bought Windows PCs because of that vast library of programs. That, in turn, creates a larger market for developers, causing them to write even more Windows apps -- and the "virtuous cycle" continues in that way.

Because browsers run across different operating systems, they've long been viewed as a threat to Windows as a platform. I asked Bill Gates about the trend back in 2005, but he downplayed the implications.

Are Native Client and the Google Chrome browser nascent elements of the Google OS people have long been talking about? Time will tell, but at the very least, it will be interesting to watch as this one plays out. Please offer your thoughts in the comments below.