Zoho Goes Offline (in a good way)
Online office suite Zoho will launch offline functionality for Zoho Writer this morning, and other applications in their suite will follow shortly. — The offline functionality was built on Google Gears, an open source project launched by Google in May 2007.
Context & Ripple Effects
Zoho has spent 2007 widening a web-native office suite beyond the browser tab: a notebook-style capture app in May and an iPhone-optimized version in June. The missing piece has been the standard objection to any web office suite — that documents are unreachable without a connection. Today it answers that by shipping offline support for Zoho Writer, announced in its own product post, with the rest of the suite to follow.
The notable strategic detail is whose technology carries the feature: Google's open-source Gears platform, launched only three months ago in May 2007. A small rival adopting a Google-built standard means Google's infrastructure, not just Google Docs, becomes the substrate competitors depend on.
First-order effects
- Zoho Writer users can now create and edit documents without a live connection, removing the single most-cited reason to stay on Microsoft Office or wait for a fully offline-capable rival.
- Google gets a marquee third-party proof point for Gears within months of launch, validating the open-source bet against building offline support solely into its own apps.
Second-order effects
- Other web office vendors face pressure to adopt Gears or ship equivalent offline layers, since offline access is now a checkable feature rather than a differentiator — and each new adopter compounds Gears' position as the de facto standard.
- Microsoft's desktop franchise loses a defensive moat: if lightweight suites like Zoho cover the disconnected case, the switching cost for casual document work drops further.
Third-order effects
- If Gears adoption spreads, the browser-plus-local-storage stack starts functioning as an application platform in its own right, shifting the competitive line in office software from 'installed vs. web' to whoever owns the sync layer beneath both.
- A structural dependency forms around Google's open-source infrastructure: rivals gain free offline capability while ceding platform influence to the same company they compete with in the suite market itself.
The trend: Web office suites are racing to dissolve the online/offline boundary, and Google's open-source Gears is positioning itself as the shared infrastructure that sets the pace.