WatBlog Newsletter Archive: WATBlog Update "Microsoft Research Has Its Hands on Gazelle - Browser, OS, Microsoft?" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Monday, February 23, 2009

WATBlog Update "Microsoft Research Has Its Hands on Gazelle - Browser, OS, Microsoft?" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

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"Microsoft Research Has Its Hands on Gazelle - Browser, OS, Microsoft?" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Microsoft Research Has Its Hands on Gazelle - Browser, OS, Microsoft?

They have been blamed for creating the apparently the worst browser scourging the web these days. Their Operating System has been mocked all around by those who have seen faster and more secure systems. The reason of course is that despite all the drawbacks Microsoft still holds fort when it comes to most users for both their browser and their OS. And now news trickles in that they have unveiled Gazelle - a web browser constructed so as to act like an operating system (unveiled doesn’t mean it’s available just yet).

Developed by the Microsoft Research division, the paper introduces the concept thus:

“As web sites evolved into dynamic web applications composing content from various web sites, browsers have become multi-principal operating environments with resources shared among mutually distrusting web site principals. Nevertheless, no existing browsers, including new architectures like IE 8, Google Chrome, and OP, have a multi-principal operating system construction that gives a browser-based OS the exclusive control to manage the protection of all system resources among web site principals. Gazelle’s Browser Kernel is an operating system that exclusively manages resource protection and sharing across web site principals.”

The entire paper can be found at http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/79655/gazelle.pdf. The research team claims it has successfully browsed 19 of the 20 most popular sites as reported by Alexa with its prototype, but admits the performance of the prototype was only “acceptable.” The paper also includes an in-depth comparison of Gazelle’s architecture and security with Google Chrome, OP and IE8.

It is also interesting to note that the MS Research Team also introduced a prototype social desktop at TechFest 09. A feature which is capable of providing you with a secure unique ID for all the files and folders on your desktop, enabling users to share, comment on, tag and search files like photos and videos via a dedicated web page powered by .NET.

I am not a techie, so don’t jump on me if I am wrong, but are these two stories related in someway? Is Gazelle a refined version of the prototype of the Social Desktop shown at TechFest?