The other Google initiative, parallel to Dart, is NaCl -- Native Client. Basically (and Miguel has demoed this with Mono at the recent NaCl conference), anything that compiles to static, native code (the Mono runtime dll's can be compiled this way) can run within a sandbox, within the browser. Pypy does this, I think; Cython does this (through conversion to C++). Were it to become a browser standard, the web would be wide open to innovation in any language (that could compile to static, native code -- but that's just about any language these days, in some form or other).

Hank

>Interesting discussion. I believe anyone that takes on a major web project is in trouble. The web is changing so fast and new tech
>is almost constant. Today we can say the HTML5 and javascript have a fighting chance to win the hearts and minds of programmers.
>But I'm not even sure of that. There has always been a cross over between the web techs (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) and today several
>framework people have decided to transform the three into just one - 'JavaScript'. Will it be that javascript lib's will win the day? I don't
>know - but I can say - I hope not. Javascript as it stands today is a terrible language - specially for large projects. The only reason several companies have moved that direction is because it's already there in the web browser. Not because the language is eloquent.
>
>Google on the other hand has started an effort to replace the entire underlining of the web with "Dart". Of course to get others to accept
>the new way to program the web they have a hybird way of producing javascript. But their main goal is to replace all of the current web
>tech. There are others that have presented other protocols in similar efforts. I wish them well because I'll be very sad if javascript wins.
>
>Building for the web today (and all the new form factors and input methods) is like building on quicksand!
>
>Johnf