I thought they'd use O3D together with NativeClient which is open source. I doubt Google would bother with some proprietary plugin, their entire OS is open sour

I thought they'd use O3D together with NativeClient which is open source. I doubt Google would bother with some proprietary plugin, their entire OS is open source. NativeClient would make plugins second nature to the web. They could be downloaded and installed as seamlessly as javascript frameworks. But since they have no guarantee that NativeClient will be adopted as a standard, they're not putting all of their eggs in that basket. Apparently they can get the speed out of WebGL some other way.