A Blog From Behind the Trenches

Engadget posted an open letter to Palm today, where they talk about what they think Palm should do to keep ahead of the game. As most people have figured out by now, browsers are a very important part of the online experience, and Engadget brings this up as one of its main points:

Add a better browser - Blazer ain't cutting it anymore.
...
Ajax support, tabs, the ability to toggle between WAP and regular versions of a page, and not having to reload every time you go back a page would be a good place to start.
...
Just look at some of the other competition in Opera, S60, etc.; it's not hard to see how much mobile browser innovation there's been in the past couple of years while you've let Blazer rot.

Engadget may be happy to learn that Opera isn't really competition to Palm, but that Palm is actually way ahead of them, and they have realized that Web browsing is vital to modern mobile devices:

Oslo, Norway - April 04, 2007 - Opera Software today announced that it has signed an agreement with Palm, Inc., to deliver its Opera 9 Web browser to Palm for use in upcoming products. Opera receives a development fee, license fees and support and maintenance fees under the Agreement to provide full Web browsing to Palm.

So Palm will indeed get Ajax and the rest of the full Opera experience. You see, Opera isn't competition to device manufacturers. On the contrary, Opera can bring the full Web to your device, and Palm has realized that.