If we wanted to have LLVM-based native clients, Emscripten would definitely be needed. Distributing binaries isn't feasible as they aren't portable. Chrome wou

If we wanted to have LLVM-based native clients, Emscripten would definitely be needed. Distributing binaries isn't feasible as they aren't portable. Chrome would like to address this by distributing LLVM bitcode[1] and then compile this to native binary using LLVM. Portable Native Clients were introduced as an idea one year ago, but AFAIK there hasn't been much development, mostly because LLVM itself isn't very portable. If native clients would be the path for future web apps, we can't reasonably expect the whole world to switch to LLVM in one night. There would have to be some fallback. As both Portable Native Clients and Emscripten work on LLVM bitcode, Emscripten would be the natural choice. [1] LLVM's name for their intermediate language, low-level bytecode