Google and AJAX

As anyone who has talked to me about it knows, I've been pretty down on AJAX and JavaScript as a platform for Web applications. But AJAX is not going away.

Now Google is releasing Google Web Toolkit (GWT), a Java to JavaScript compiler, which will allow developers to write in Java and then compile to JavaScript. That makes it much more reasonable from my perspective to develop real applications—with well designed and disciplined code—that runs in a browser. (This will also add life to Java itself.)

What is Google's motivation in doing this? I guess it's to support and encourage the development of browser based applications—which will make thin clients more powerful and reduce the need for (Windows-based) thick clients.