The native api isn&#x27;t only necessary for accessing operating system resources or running natively compiled code.  It&#x27;s also to interact with the browser at a fundamental level.  It&#x27;s extremely useful for things that modify the user interface or need to interact with the dom, like <i>vimperator</i>, <i>ublock</i>, <i>tab mix plus</i>, etc...<p>I think one of the bigger problems with a non-native plugin api is that doing anything non-trivial could become either unnecessarily complex or possibly even intractable.  I&#x27;d be curious how they are planning to support extensions like <i>vimperator</i> or even <i>no-script</i>.