Mmm. You can now download C/C++ apps to run within Google Chrome.
So the browser really is becoming an operating system. Or, at least, a sandbox. Soon, I expect, you’ll be able to download full VMs and run them in the browser, at which point the whole idea of displaying web pages will be just one service your browser provides, in much the same way that driving a graphics card is just one function of your current operating system.
The main difference between your browser and your operating system will then simply be whether they think of the network, or the disk, as being the primary filesystem…
Mmm. What I didn’t discuss, of course, is whether this is actually a good idea or not…