Death of a client: Emacs in the Google world

(tags emacs, editor, Google)

I was thinking that Emacs was going to be left out of the Google vision. The way I see it, Google is just an implementation of idea of centralized computing, making computing cheaper for everybody. I have come to like/love/depend on Google even though I am aware of the privacy concerns. For instance, I use the Google bookmarks even though I'm a del.icio.us user. I also use the notebooks and gmail, etc.

So what do I mean emacs is going to left out? Well for one, Emacs is not a first-class supported browser in Google's eyes. All those fancy Web 2.0 interfaces support IE first, then Firefox at a close second, then the rest of the PC interfaces third, then mobile phones, etc. Another one is that Emacs doesn't have a JavaScript implementation. Lastly, Google may not publish APIs for every service.

Then I remembered what emacs is. It's a programmable programming editor. Some inventive people have already picked up where Google left off, for example, those user-developed emacs libraries for Google services, "g". They of course take advantage of the published Google APIs.

Still, there is a lag. For example, there's no library for Google Notebook (beta). Unfortunately, there is no Google API to edit the data in this service. Well, what do I expect for free.