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Comment by shawndumas | Hacker News Reader

"This is the most significant step forward in web browser connectivity since 2004, when Google launched Gmail and AJAX was coined."

Microsoft --> AJAX[1]. And yes, I know that they aren't saying that Google --> AJAX but it kinda leaves that impression.

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http://garrettsmith.net/blog/archives/2006/01/microsoft_inve...

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Microsoft invented XMLHTTP, an ActiveX object, not XMLHttpRequest, that is similar but not proprietary, and a part of Ajax. And Ajax is a term invented by Garrett - and not Microsoft - that includes several W3C formats.

"AJAX" the term is a meaningless bit of inaccurate noise (it is wrong in almost every way). No idea what your bit about XMLHttpRequest was, given that was nothing more than a formalizing and cross-platform implementation of Microsoft's COM object (which itself was originally written for Outlook Web Access).

Like the GP that bit about AJAX was just all wrong. Garrett is so astonishingly irrelevant in all of this, as is the AJAX me-too title. Google was very important, but only insofar as they legitimized the technique and made a lot of people realize that this crazy web thing was a lot more powerful than people often thought. And it wasn't gmail -- it was Google Suggests. That was an atomic bomb on webapps that proved that highly dynamic pages were possible and preferable.

Me - using XmlHttp(Request) since 2001.

AJAX as a term and design idea was coined in 2005[1], which is what intent of the quote (though it too is technically inaccurate]. The quote you listed is talking about coining the term, not inventing the technology.

If you read the article you linked, it also says this:

"Finally -- 6 years later -- Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path coined a catchy phrase: the term Ajax was born."

[1] http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/ajax-new-approach-web-appl...

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