Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) appears to be having some difficulty getting WebGL to gain traction as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) separately dismissed the emerging specification this week. WebGL is a cross-platform API that provides hardware graphics acceleration for 3D web applications and is touted by the search giant as a royalty-free alternative to bring accelerated 3D to Internet browsers. Google has incorporated WebGL into its increasingly popular Chrome browser since Chrome 9.

The Microsoft Security Response Center team explained their concerns in a blog post titled "WebGL Considered Harmful." The three main concerns pertain to how WebGL exposes too much hardware functionality to the Internet, depends too heavily on third-parties for security and is susceptible to various denial-of-service attack scenarios. The blog concludes: "We believe that WebGL will likely become an ongoing source of hard-to-fix vulnerabilities. In its current form, WebGL is not a technology Microsoft can endorse from a security perspective."

Elsewhere, Apple software engineer Chris Marrin made it clear that Apple is not in a hurry to adopt WebGL. He wrote on the WebGL mailing list: "WebGL will not be publicly available in iOS 5. It will only be available to iAd developers." As observed by InformationWeek, Apple likely wants to wait until the various security kinks are worked out.

The counter-argument presented by The Khronos Group--which published the WebGL 1.0 specification--is that WebGL was architected from the ground up with security in mind. As such, it is probably just be a matter of time before the security issues are ironed out.

For more:
- check out this article at InformationWeek
- check out this article at Security Research & Defense
- check out this article at Ars Technica

Related Articles:
Google releases Chrome 9; comes with Google Instant, WebGL
Google Chrome 11 gets bug fixes, speech input
SCORECARD: Browser Wars