[izolate]

As the dust settles around this announcement, I'm feeling more positive now than in my initial response. I don't think Dart ever had a chance to compete with JavaScript on the browser, especially as JS is advancing so rapidly with ES6/ES7. I'm a strong believer in what the future holds for JS.

But Dart is something else. Dart showed us what JavaScript would have been if it were designed this decade, and with some thought to its architecture. It's clinical in its cleanliness (have a peek at its standard library and you'll agree). It was pitched as a full stack language for web applications done right, and I certainly felt it lived up to that claim.

Personally, I'm more interested in Dart as a replacement for Node.js. Luckily that dream is still alive: "We continue our strong investment in Dart VM for server, embedded, and mobile."