Google Gears: Replacing One Problem with Another
I've been thinking a little bit about Google Gears recently and after reading the documentation things I've realized that making a Web-based application that works well offline poses an interesting set of challenges.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google Gears has barely been out a week and the analyst pile-on is already layered: Search Engine Land opened the debate asking what to make of it, and Scobleizer followed by shrugging that he had seen it all before. Dare Obasanjo adds a developer's note to the pile: having actually read the documentation, he concludes the plugin does not remove the offline problem so much as replace it with a harder one.
That framing matters because Gears is Google's answer to the web's oldest limitation — apps die when the connection does — and the earliest technical readings suggest the sync and consistency work falls on every developer who adopts it, not on Google.
First-order effects
- Developers evaluating Gears discover the real cost sits in synchronization: keeping local and server copies of data consistent once users can edit offline, a problem the plugin installs rather than solves.
- Google gains an early filter on which of its own web applications can plausibly run disconnected, since Gears only helps apps whose data models survive being cut off from the server.
Second-order effects
- Vendors competing with Google's web application suite face an awkward dependency question: build offline support on a plugin controlled by a rival, or hold out for a vendor-neutral mechanism and cede the offline feature gap in the meantime.
Third-order effects
- If offline-capable web apps prove important enough, the pressure lands on browser makers and standards bodies to deliver a native offline mechanism — casting Gears less as infrastructure than as a stopgap that defines what the permanent solution must cover.
The trend: Web applications are pushing past the thin-client model, with vendor plugins like Gears serving as transitional scaffolding toward offline support built into browsers themselves.