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2007

Google Kicks Offline Web Apps into Gear

May 31, 2007 0

Google engineers have enabled what Internet surfers for years have yearned for–Web applications that work offline.

San Francisco — Google Inc. on Wednesday introduced a way to move its online software applications off the Internet, hoping the flexibility will encourage more people to use the free services and extend the company’s clout beyond its ubiquitous search engine.

The Mountain View-based company unveiled its new tools, called “Google Gears,” to kick off a series of software development conferences being held Thursday in 10 cities around the world…

Google is expecting to host more 5,000 developers, including about 1,500 in Silicon Valley.

Gears, an open source technology allowing browsers to support offline web applications when they are connected to the Internet or not, have been released by Google to coincide with the company’s annual Developer Day.

Web applications are fine when you have got an Internet connection, but what happens when someone cuts through the cable or you want to work during a flight and Wi-Fi is not available? Or, for that matter, when you are trying to get something done at an overloaded hotspot?

That is where offline web apps fill the gap. That will change with Gears, which will enable users to synchronize their computers with online applications and then use the programs offline.

By bridging the gulf between new Web services and the older world of desktop software, where any data changes are stored locally on users’ machines, Google is pushing the Web into whole new spheres of activity and posing a challenge to rival Microsoft Corp., leader in the desktop software era.

“The Internet is great, but you cannot always be plugged in to it,” Jeff Huber, Google’s vice president of engineering, said in an interview. “Gears address’s a functional gap on the Web.”

The goal of Google Gears is to create a single, standardized way to add offline capabilities to Web applications, said Linus Upson, engineering director at Google.

Gears provide three main JavaScript APIs. LocalServer stores and accesses application pages offline, Database stores and accesses application data on the user’s computer, andWorkerPool performs long-running tasks such as synchronizing data between the user’s computer and the server.

It runs on Internet Explorer on Windows; Firefox on Windows, Mac OS and Linux; and on the Safari Mac OS browser.

Initially, only Google’s “reader” application for collecting the latest content on blogs and other Web sites will work offline, but the company plans to add other programs to the mix, Huber said. He cited Google’s e-mail, calendar; word processing and spreadsheet programs as logical candidates for offline access.

If word processing and spreadsheets become available offline, they could become even more viable threats to Microsoft Corp.’s Office software suite, a major moneymaker that traditionally has been installed directly on computer hard drives.

Although Google has tried to depict its applications as a supplement to Microsoft’s dominant programs, it is no secret that both companies are trying to undermine each other as they jostle for the loyalties of computer users.

Google expects to have a consumer-ready release of Google Gears, which will be less than 1 megabyte in size, “within months.” It also expects to submit the code to a standards body so that it will eventually be built into all standards-compliant browsers, Upson said.

Google engineers took on the task of bringing offline access to Web browsers because customers of its hosted Web applications complained about not being able to work when disconnected, Upson said.

“One of the reasons we are doing Gears is that developers here at Google have really pushed the envelope on what can be done in the browser so engineers are hitting barriers harder and faster,” he said.

There is nothing magical about Gears – web applications must be rewritten to take advantage of its facilities. A Gears-enabled version of Google Reader has been released to demonstrate what’s possible.

With Google Gears we are tackling a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud, said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google. “We believe strongly in the power of the community to stretch this new technology to the limits of what is possible and ultimately emerge with an open standard that benefits everyone.”

Early partners who will use Gears in their products include design software leader Adobe Systems Inc., maker of Flash animation and Acrobat document-sharing software, as well as new Apollo tools that work online and offline, Adobe said.

Analysts said Google’s move capitalizes on a growing trend over the past couple of years for Web applications to behave as responsively as desktop software.

Microsoft already offers technologies like Groove, which allows users to work offline, then synchronize changes when connected later. But the software giant has been reluctant to make existing products work both online and offline.

By releasing the Google Gear code, the company hopes to get feedback from developers before releasing a consumer plug-in.