Google Gears: Offline is the New Online

With its announcement late yesterday of online-into-offline Google Gears -- and an offline version of Google Reader, among other things -- Google (GOOG) has done a bunch of important things.

First, and most importantly, it has made me look sooooo smart with my continuing "offline is the new online is the new offline" riff. This is something I've been tipping relentlessly for some time here.

Second, and some will think more importantly, Google has shot another cannon across Microsoft's (MSFT) bow. One of the main things that Microsoft's core apps have had going for them was they worked offline, while Google's didn't. Soon that will no longer be the case, and we will see a real set of how sticky Microsoft's apps remain.

Finally, and this is shrewd stuff, Google has stolen a march on Bill Gates's visit with Apple's (AAPL) Steve Jobs last night at D. Where Google used the day to announce a rethink of the whole offline/online paradigm, and Steve Jobs is introducing DRM-less music and a deal with YouTube for Apple TV content, Gates's Microsoft has tried to capitalize on last night's event by... launching an electric pool table.

Comments

[Internet2k4]

Google Docs is better compared functionally to (giveaway, with a new PC) Microsoft Works than to Office, and doesn't have the base of clever little home-user templates that Works has. The attraction of Docs remains its online availability, which I imagine MS could easily match by putting Works online if it saw a way to turn a buck from it.

[Brian Croner]

MS Office is already running scared from OpenOffice.org. In their Novell patent license pact, they actually specified OO.org as an "if violated" clause detail. Google is going to tear into Microsoft, plant the sword, and it'll be like Obee-Wan getting sabered by Darth Vader in Star Wars. Nothing left to get. Maybe some cloth.

[John Scott]

Protecting a monopoly becomes harder and harder the bigger you get. MSFT will need help from the government to forestall its fall. They will get it, but it will only postpone the inevitable.