Re:A look at asm.js and the future with WebAssembly
by pcwalton on Saturday January 16, 2016 @01:11PM
(#10916126)
> Well, let's hope Google realises that crawling web apps based on WebAssembly will consume a lot of CPU cycles and will decrease their rank or not index them at all. This will put an damper so that WebAssembly is only used for SaaS web apps compiled from native C++ and not for the vast amount of general purpose websites as a CEO technique to speed up the page load - which would be a real trojan horse, and dangerous for the web.
Google will never do this. There's no indication whatsoever that Google (or for that matter any other browser vendor) is opposed to delivering apps over the Web in compiled format. Remember Google Web Toolkit? Closure Compiler?
If you want to argue against wasm on the grounds that it makes reverse engineering harder, then you should also be opposed to JavaScript transpilers and source minifiers. That's an intellectually coherent position to take. However, no browser vendor to date has taken this position, and to suggest otherwise is just narrative constructing.
Google will never do this. There's no indication whatsoever that Google (or for that matter any other browser vendor) is opposed to delivering apps over the Web in compiled format. Remember Google Web Toolkit? Closure Compiler?
If you want to argue against wasm on the grounds that it makes reverse engineering harder, then you should also be opposed to JavaScript transpilers and source minifiers. That's an intellectually coherent position to take. However, no browser vendor to date has taken this position, and to suggest otherwise is just narrative constructing.