Google Chrome is progressing rapidly and it certainly has been a success. Some even speculate that it was responsible for preventing Firefox the reach a global usage of 25%. Anyway, what's much more important is that Google is working hard on new technologies that may become interesting in the future.

On Chromium, the place where Google Chrome's source code lives, they've announced the ANGLE project, which stands for Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine. Its purpose is to layer WebGL's subset of the OpenGL ES 2.0 API over DirectX 9.0c API calls. As you may know, the last releases of Windows do not come with any OpenGL version bundled, and most GPU manufacturers pore more effort in a good DirectX (games!) driver, than the far less popular OpenGL (AutoCAD?).

WebGL is an effort by the Khronos Group to create a standard for 3D content on the web. You may get flashbacks of VRML or other technologies from the past, but in this case the real intend is to make it hardware accelerated. Imagine playing those Android, iPhone, iPod touch or iPad games right in your web browser without the need for a (Flash Player or Java) plug-in.

By open-sourcing the ANGLE project, Google hopes that other members of the Khronos Group (such as Mozilla and Opera) will join their effort and increase the possibility of WebGL in total as a valid and solid technology of the web. Currently WebGL is present in Mozilla Firefox 3.7 nightly builds, WebKit (not Safari), and Google Chrome developer previews.