Google Gears

What is it? Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using… JavaScript APIs.

Note that:

• It doesn’t magically make web applications work offline. The developers need to write code.
• Mozilla was also part of the announcement. It’s been known for a while that something like this was going to be part of Firefox V3. It seems that Gears will provide that part.
• Adobe too. Ryan Stewart has a good post on what Google Gears means for Rich Internet Applications and Apollo. “It sounds like Adobe and Google are working together to make sure… developers can pretty easily go between Gears and Apollo as they see fit for different types of applications.”
• Opera too.
• Not Microsoft or Apple: this is shrewd stuff, Google has stolen a march on Bill Gates’s visit with Steve Jobs tonight. Thus Paul K points out one way in which the Google Gears announcement is bad news for Microsoft.

There is a browser extension for IE as well as for Firefox. There is currently one Gears-enabled service: Google Reader.