Chrome has another strike against it: a potential over-reliance on web-based computing.

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By enabling applications to both scale in capacity and provide non-stop availability, server-farms have played a major role in the rapid expansion of Web-based computing.

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Suncalled the acquisition a further investment into the future of Web-based computing, to be pioneered by vendors like Oracle, with its new Sun-based Business Online database outsourcing service.

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Web-based computing is nascent but is considered to be the wave of the future, and Microsoft knows it needs to figure out a strong game plan there.

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As the name suggests, this is a balance between personal computing, with local applications, and web-based cloud computing.

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As has become the standard for new Web-based startups, the site is using Amazon Web Services to provide computing services.

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But breakthroughs in areas like mobile computing and Web-based, or "cloud, " services are "just beginning, " he says, and emerging markets have shown a voracious appetite for technology.

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Microsoft recently launched Office 365, a web-based productivity software product, to mark an entry into the fast-growing cloud-computing space.

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Today, client-server architectures have been replaced by browser-based user Web applications and the cost of computing has fallen dramatically which, along with cloud computing, have made scalability issue quite a different proposition.

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