Gears of War
When search giant Google rolled out its Gears package in May, it quietly signaled
a major shift of momentum in the arena of integrated Web applications and development.
Google Gears is a set of development tools that enable free Google apps (currently
limited to Google Reader) to
be used offline. By enabling local storage and processing, Google Gears
effectively slams shut a critical competitive gap between Microsoft and Google.
As one IT director for a mid-sized law firm told me: "[It] might be an
easy way for our attorneys to brown-bag client data and take it to court while
people are still working with it. Microsoft can't sit on this and think it can
sell packaged apps forever, that's for sure."
Are Fortune 2000 businesses going to ditch Microsoft Office and millions of
dollars of custom development to put workers on Google Docs, Spreadsheets and
Calendar? Hardly. But the bottom-up appeal of Google apps should become a lot
more attractive thanks to Google Gears, which is built on simple JavaScript
APIs.
What are your impressions of Google Gears? Has your dev shop looked into enabling
offline-savvy rich Internet applications using the toolset? E-mail me at mdesmond@reddevnews.com.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 07/25/2007