The Future: Push Browsers are Coming (and Needed)

This bold statement was given 3 years ago; yet I don't think we are much closer to a realization. We are seeing Ajax technologies coming into use, presenting new boundaries to what is possible applications in a browser. As we conjecture in the paper "Engineering Push-based Web Services", many applications would benefit from both push-enabled client applications, as well as a network where push is used in combination with pull to optimize network usage.

Google is clearly going to present a push-based browser sometime soon. The scenario depicted by Tyler and Bosworth of BEA Systems clearly coincides with what Google is doing with diverse desktop applications. It becomes even clearer when we know Bosworth got hired by Google last year. My guess is that Google will buy Open Office and let users use it through their browsers.

In the meantime, we are quietly working on the Internet architectures to make such applications computationably feasible. Both in regards to network traffic, but also to user distruption. Wide Area Information Filtering is the Future..