Google Gears Does Offline Applications

Little late on this, but I missed it last week when it happened: Google released a new program, Google Gears, which allows websites to make offline versions of themselves.
As a way of showing off what Google Gears is capable of, Google added support for it to Google Reader, its RSS news reader. Once you’ve installed the Google Gears browser plug-in (for IE 6.0 or Firefox 1.5 on Windows, Mac and Linux), you’ll get a new link in Reader labeled with a sort of sync icon. Click it, and Gears syncs up to 2,000 items from Reader, ready for you to read when offline.
Gears is a major play for Google, one that will help it compete with traditional desktop software by removing a major sticking point with users, that their stuff doesn’t work without an internet connection. Obviously, the bigger goal has got to be getting Google […]

Original post by Nathan Weinberg