Is Gmail getting offline?
There are winds of change sweeping the global software market— and you could see it next in the most ubiquitous activity on the Internet: e-mail. — If current indications are anything to go by, Microsoft's popular Outlook software and IBM's Lotus Notes …
Context & Ripple Effects
The story rests on speculation — flagged here as unconfirmed — that Gmail may be gaining offline functionality, a feature that has been the core advantage of installed clients like Microsoft's Outlook and IBM's Lotus Notes. Framing it as part of 'winds of change' in the software market puts webmail on a collision course with the two entrenched desktop franchises.
The competitive backdrop that same week is concrete: Microsoft began offering Office Ultimate 2007 to students for $60, a $620 cut from its $680 retail price, and gave a first look at its free web analytics tool 'Gatineau' — both consistent with an incumbent shoring up distribution and developer-facing goodwill while browser-based rivals press on its core products.
First-order effects
- If offline Gmail materializes, the main practical reason to keep a desktop client like Outlook for personal mail narrows, and Google closes the last conspicuous functional gap between webmail and installed software.
- IBM's Lotus Notes and Microsoft's Outlook lose offline access as a differentiator in the accounts where it currently justifies a paid, installed product.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's steep student discount on Office Ultimate 2007 — $60 against a $680 list price — reads as pricing defense of the desktop franchise at exactly the moment web-based challengers threaten the client model.
- Enterprise buyers gain negotiating leverage: if free webmail approaches parity on the offline feature that Notes sells on, incumbents face pressure to compete on integration, security and support rather than capability checklists.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the browser becomes the default mail platform and the client-versus-web boundary dissolves, shifting competition toward whoever controls the account and the data rather than whoever ships the binary.
- Incumbent responses of this kind — deep discounts and free ancillary tools — point toward a structural repricing of productivity software as web delivery removes per-seat installation economics.
The trend: Web applications are closing their final functional gap with desktop software, with offline access as the decisive battleground between Google's webmail and installed clients from Microsoft and IBM.