Net Applications made waves last week when it told reporters Google is masking origins of some of the traffic streaming out of its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.

Google dumped fuel on the fire by unveiling Native Client, an open source runtime engine, browser plugin and compilation tool set to boost Web application performance on computing devices. Some observers think Native Client could be combined with Google's fresh from beta Chrome browser, Gears and to form some of Microsoft Windows-killing Web operating system.

eWEEK caught up with some of the men behind Native Client, which interestingly is a research project but not a famed 20 percent time project, to find out what Google's up to. Google's Linus Upson, director of engineering, Brad Chen, engineering manager for Native Client and Henry Bridge, product manager for Native Client, obliged eWEEK's questions.

Questions, which address what Native Client is and why it's such a hard nut to crack, were formed with help from Gartner's Ray Valdes. Answers include jokes about Google's product secrecy and jibes about how Microsoft has conflated the definition of what an operating system is.   

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