ft.com/techblog

Microsoft is facing a Web triumvirate trying to muscle in on its domination of the desktop.

Google Gears, announced today, will enable Google applications such as Gmail, Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets and Reader to be used without an internet connection, although only the last named will initially have this offline capability.

Google is also making Gears open source, encouraging developers to make 1,000s of browser-based applications work offline - storing information on a computer’s hard drive or local network as well as in the internet "cloud".

The ability to look at your Inbox or write a Word document without being online has been a key differentiator of Microsoft’s Office suite. At the same time, Google has tried to argue it is different from Office because it has created applications meant for sharing with other people. But if the programs are used offline, this distinction dissolves and Google’s applications become direct competitors to Microsoft’s.

The other members of the triumvirate are Mozilla, creator of the Firefox browser, and Adobe, developer of the Acrobat portable document format (pdf) and Flash media player that have become standards of the web.

Mozilla is planning to support the offlining of Web applications in the next, 3.0 version of Firefox and is already experimenting with this.

Adobe will introduce Apollo later this year, a platform that enables web apps to run outside the browser on a PC, mobile phone or other device, including when they are disconnected from the net, albeit with more limited functionality.

The walls are clearly coming down between the browser and the computer desktop. Armed with Web apps that are maybe not as good as Office, but seem good enough and are free to consumers, the barbarians of the online world are at the gates of Microsoft’s offline kingdom.

May 31st, 2007 in Internet | Permalink