  hide cookie message 73,494 News Articles  Microsoft eyes
ditching browser for secure Web apps  Microsoft researchers have
developed the prototype of a client-side architecture that would
replace the Web browser with a much more secure virtualized
environment that isolates Web applications.  Called Embassies,
the technology would have applications run in low-level, native-
code containers that would use Internet addresses for all
external communications with applications. The architecture is
based on the notion of a "pico-datacenter," a client-side
version of a shared server datacenter.  "Since the datacenter
model is designed to be robust to malicious tenants, it is never
dangerous for the user to click a link and invite a possibly
hostile party onto the client," Microsoft researchers said in a
paper presented this month at the USENIX Symposium on Networked
System Design and Implementation.    "I think [Embassies is] an
interesting idea and shows enough promise to be worth additional
investigation and invest