What? Java is better than AJAX on the client?

Sacre bleu! A Java applet - ThinkFree - wins Computerworld's award for best online office suite? What is this world coming to? I thought we had dismissed Java on the client long ago?

Quote from ThinkFree CEO T. J. Kang:

Currently the best way to offer advanced Web Office functionality is to utilize Java. Ajax doesn’t cut it when it comes to advanced functionality. Although in theory you can build it in Ajax, the resulting code will be so big that it will take ages to download stuff and slow the system considerably. So Java is, much more efficient than Ajax when it comes to implementing Microsoft Office-like functionality.

Well, I never. Everyone talks about how fast AJAX is, but here it is taking longer to download than Java for complex applications. Maybe I should check this Java thing out... :)

P.S. Thanks to Chris Adamson and Hari Gottapati for bringing this to my attention. Pretty cool.

P.P.S - Google is in talks to purchase ThinkFree?