Google Looks To Solve The Offline Problem Of Online Apps
from the this-one's-on-us dept
While the trend of delivering software as a service and moving traditional client applications to web-based versions continues to grow, one big stumbling block remains: the need for an uninterrupted connection to the internet. While it's slowly becoming a less significant issue as the availability of wireless and mobile broadband increases, business users in particular are hesitant to have to rely on a network connection to access their applications and data at all time. So, of course, enter Google. The company's already a leader in delivering web-based applications, and is trying to make a bigger push into the enterprise market with its Google Apps suite, and succeeding requires some way around the issue of offline access. To that end, the company has announced Google Gears, an open-source technology that allows for the offline use of web-based applications. Google is offering Gears freely and open-sourced, and is working to standardize it. While many companies would use proprietary technology and try to maintain control of it in this type of situation, hoping to maintain some sort of competitive advantage, Google recognizes that driving the entire industry forward with a standard solution will work to its benefit.
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They are not all that different from other compani
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Re: They are not all that different from other com
That's an 'old school' way of looking at it, as in the end user does not have to hand over any money to use most Google services. But there is a 'cost' or 'payment' in the form of data or information.
Google says, fine, you won't have to pay to use our search engine, but we are going to anonymously track your searches to fine tune our search engine and to deliver more relevant advertising. The currency is data and Google is one of the few companies that have been able to convert that data into gold.
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Googles On The Right Track
It sure appears to me that Google is on the right track with its Gears add-on. The biggest hold up with web enabling applications is that your high and dry whenever the internet server is down.
While there are applications that require instantaneous access to the internet, stock trading comes to mind, there are thousands of others where it is not absolutely required. Google Reader is just the first of these, I've installed Gears and have worked with the new Google Reader today and it seems to be working just fine with or without the internet connected.
Creating a standard in how web applications handle internet interruptions and later synchronize can only help Google and the Web-Enabled Industry.
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