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Google Gears is Launched
Mister Inbetween writes "Google is rolling out a technology designed to overcome the major drawback faced by all web-based applications: the fact that they don't work without an internet connection. Google Gears is an open source technology for creating offline web applications that is being launched today at Google's annual Developer Day gatherings around the world."
Boo! Am I the only one who thinks the Big 4 browsers should be supported, and not just FireFox/IE? In fact, I'd rather put a sign up on my site that says, "IE Users not welcome, upgrade to a REAL browser" than not support the millions of mobile and home gaming machines out there. Of course, I suppose that's just me.
I'm looking into how this works right now. I have my suspicions, but we'll see.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
There are some sample applications available here to help you get started using Google Gears. I found it pretty non-intuitive at the beginning but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it slowly.
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Shouldn't there be a link to Google Gears in the article?
Or a CD-ROM?
Hehehehe. Mark Andreesen once said that the browser would replace the desktop and Microsoft buried him. Google has sneaked up on Microsoft, big time. This seems to be a pretty good tool. Works better than Windows 1.0 or 3.0 ever did.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Done ;-}
then dojo's offline storage? Or flash's storage?
Website Hosting
What's the point of having an offline web application?
You might as well create your own traditional app so that you don't have to deal with compatibility and security issues with a multitude of browsers and platforms. Or maybe the idea is doing something completely opposite to what Microsoft has been doing for almost a decade now, putting the browser functionality within the app.
And here I thought it was the hideous UI and sluggish, memory-sucking JavaScript. Now I know better.
And don't forget your Google Gear, too.
I run a business that is entirely online. I haven't had one user ask for offline access. Who are these people that are clamoring for it? I never saw the need - most people have internet access 24/7. I just don't see the need.
The EFF said don't use Google Desktop because of vulnerabilities" "[We urge] consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password," the EFF said in a statement" http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1925064,00.as p
If Google is under pressure from some governments to hide things, from others to store and reveal things - why would people want more, more, more Google and their vulnerabilities on a computer? As bad as Microsoft is I would rather deal with the devil I still know then the Googlers who seem to want to be the center of the cyber-universe in a way that seems more grandiose than even M$. They lost me when the started censoring stuff here US never mind China.
The beauty of web apps is that they let you connect to others in a real-time basis. There is no offline equivalent. Period.
Google is slowly reinventing the computer... to be a lot like what it was 20 years ago, except through a web browser. Just think, in the 1970s we all used ultra-thin clients called Teletype terminals to connect to mainframes. Then came the PC revolution, and soon we all had slower machines of our own. Then all those machines got as fast as mainframes, and we got the Internet, and started connecting to each other. Now we're going back to ultra-thin-clients connecting not to mainframes but to Google's giant server farm where they store all our personal data and promise not to abuse it. Nothing ever really changes, does it?
Anti-Globalism
As a web developer, I don't see the wide adoption of "offline web application". Why not just create a desktop app that talks to the webapp through web services when you get back the connection? I've looked into Dojo offline examples, but still can't think of any business scenarios around an offline web application. I guess like what the article suggested, for email and word or image processing makes sense...but then how often do we really need to implement an application like that? I'd love to read some other ideas using offline web applications from slashdotters.
Jumptree Project Management
There are a number of web servers that are fairly tiny and run on PCs... Nothing stopping a stand-alone browser application from installing it's own web server...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
With this speed and kind of innovation google will be unstoppable even after m$ joins hands with yahoo ! way to go google !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Suppose that I, for example, run a small service-oriented business, with technicians and service trucks and customer appointments, in addition to the normal gamut of meetings and other internals. Suppose that some of these technicians are located in different towns.
Suppose that, because of geographic disparity, it becomes a pain in the ass to manage a central paper-based schedule and keep everyone on the same page. And suppose I find that the solution to this problem is to implement some sort of network-aware calender. And, that I want to be able to access and modify this calender by a variety of means, from standalone PalmOS devices to Windows boxen to WinCE phones, because the different techs, salespeople, and managers all have their own levels of technical ability and devices of choice.
And now, just suppose that something like Google Calender fits this bill and is put in service. Everyone knows where everyone else is, what they're doing later today (or next week). Scheduling a job can happen easily, and conflicts can be seen and avoided immediately. Life is good, and the paper schedule is forgotten (good riddance).
With me so far?
Good.
Now, suppose that the Intar-web is down, and Google Calender is unreachable.
Trucks stop rolling. Customers get angry about missed appointments. Jobs don't get done. And, the kicker: Nobody, except perhaps the stubborn old geek with an offline Palm Pilot, has any idea what anyone (including themselves!) is supposed to be doing. The company basically takes a vacation until connectivity is restored, which (in small business) means waiting as long as it takes for Time Warner or SBC to correct the problem.
Having offline web application support, if implemented well, can fix this problem. Even if new jobs can't be scheduled electronically, at least work on existing stuff can continue, as all that it takes is one person with Firefox on a desktop machine to pass out orders.
The worst-case, then, goes from having no data at all and a complete cessation of work, to at least having old data. A notepad and cell phones can then fill in the blanks for new jobs (just like it used to), which can be entered into the calender system once the Internet connection comes back.
Which is quite likely good enough.
Kid-proof tablet..
I think this *is* a "sane way".
I think Java had some great goals; I don't think it worked as well as it was promised...
Will this follow Java in that? We'll see...
A cheerful little bird is sitting here singing.
When you can browse it offline! Excellent.
IE had this feature for ages. HTA (HTML Applications) can be offline applications.
And now Firefox is getting the same feature.
Why do we need yet another plug-in.
I was aiming at +funny. /. Procedure.
So your comment is either Offtopic for Funny, or Insightful for
Hey Yahoo called, they want their idea back... well not exactly... actually if i read this correctly, Google's tool works across the browser divide and back again.
Yahoo's Konfab is desktop only. They have a UI lib but it isn't the same API as Konfab.
Google Gadgets is web only.
Apple Widgets are desktop/dashboard only.
MS Gadgets are desktop only.
Adobe Apollo apps are desktop only.
So I give Google kudos for making the first implementation of a javascript based application engine that works both with/through the browser and standalone on the desktop.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
So, what about the millions of people who won't pay very close attention, and will type a bunch of stuff into Google Docs or whatever -- and fail to notice that their two-year-old unplugged the router? The web app keeps running and it indicates "App Offline" in the corner of the screen... they go to work and TEHOMG no document!
What then? At least right now it's all very clear: no internet, page doesn't load, check for the problem. Is it just me?
if we head in the direction of download first web apps.... how is this better then just downloading a compiled app? certainly not cross platform - you need IE or FF to run it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
zipzoomfly.com used to be called "googlegear" before Google forced them to change their name.
Either way it's still one of the best sites to buy computer parts from.
Just a little piece of web history.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
The iPhone doesn't support desktop style apps. This could help bridge the gap if google / Apple were to support something like gears on the iPhone's browser.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
I'd *love* to get Google Maps in offline mode. How much will they charge for updates?
Silly me, i thought the major drawback of web based applications was that HTML sucks for building rich applications.
So basically what Gears offers is the worst of both worlds. A terrible rich application dev environment (HTML + JS) combined with database concurrency headaches. Awesome!
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
What this solves: * Location dependence * Online dependence * Needing to lug hardware around (such as a USB thumbdrive) I'm having trouble understanding what about this is insane.
Of course IBM rolled this out six years ago in the Domino server, although I don't really expect Google's offering to handle Replication/Save conflicts as well as Domino does. Of course, now that there is actually another product out, the anti-Notes trolls can start complaining that the 6 year old tech from IBM isn't using the same API that the brand new offering from Google uses.
I cannot work without internet. How am I supposed to check slashdot from time to time?
This is sad. As a programming language, Javascript makes Visual Basic look good.
The wierd thing is that we went through all this with Java almost a decade ago. "Gears" is supposed to do roughly the same things Java was originally supposed to do.
Java went in a strange direction. "Applets" in the browser were never very popular. Java desktop applications were not widely successful, although a whole office suite was written in Java. Java ended up being the replacement for COBOL; it's what runs the business logic on the server.
The real innovation in Gears is providing a local database, instead of files, as the basic storage medium. That's not new in the Microsoft world (many apps use Jet, Microsoft's little database), but the open source world is still mostly in the flat file era for local storage. SQLite gets you locking, atomic transactions, structured data, and search capability. And you can get at those files via SQL; you don't have to access them through Gears and JavaScript. We may see bindings to the Gears back end for other languages. The middleware portion of this may be more important than the browser-based user interface.
Incidentally, no one seems to have mentioned that Google has launched a replacement for SourceForge.
Thing is, I like the mozilla approach ( http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2007/02/offline-zimbr a-with-firefox.html ) better. I think it's because there's no need to install 3rd party apps and such. But thing is, as it seems Google is ahead in this, and if people start adopting it (remains to be seen) then the mozilla approach probably won't stir too much water when it's released.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I wrote a simple web server in Perl that runs locally. Works fine.
Why would I do such a thing?
BECAUSE I CAN! BWAHAHAHAAAAHHH!8-))
because last time, Microsoft was Google, and IBM was Microsoft. But now Google is Microsoft and Microsoft is IBM. If you haven't read any of Clayton Christensen's books, now would be a good time to read The Innovator's Solution by Christensen and Raynor. Ever since the telephone, small upstart companies have been offering products and services that were shunned by the market leader's best customers, and hence the market leader, usually because the product underperformed the expectations of the market leader's best customers. But the market entrant was able to make enough profit and gradually got better and better, and then started pulling customers out of the market leader's business network.
RCA didn't use transistors in small radios until it was too late. Western Union didn't use the telephone until it was too late. Microsoft didn't work with the FOSS community, and now it is too late. Google is great at broadcasting software. Microsoft is still mostly delivering software the old, slow way. This news is another digital tipping point. The OS is becoming less crucial. GNU Linux is getting its foot in the door with Dell. Google and 1000 other new start ups are using the power of FOSS to do creative stuff. Microsoft seems to be focused on older business models (DRM'd content) while Google continues to broadcast everything from its own software (Google algorithms on Linux) to fun, new format for video (YouTube shorts). I think that we are going to see some major changes in the way that desktop software is funded, distributed, and delivered. Once the Microsoft monopoly on the desktop is cracked, think of the changes we will see.
I'm at the GDDAU and saw the demo, this is very interesting.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
How does this compare to Dojo Offline?
http://dojotoolkit.org/offline
Woo, another beta... yaaay...
Couldn't google make something that actually evolves out of the beta? I mean Gmail is STILL in beta according to the logo... 3 years of beta "testing"? Isn't that enough?
Though still only a psuedo-standard. (Boo!) :-)
What you call a "pseudo standard" is how good standards are created: first you use and document a technology, then, after several years of practical use, you go to a standards body.
Unfortunately, these days, a "standard" seems to mean to many people a rubber stamping of some idea that some committee or engineers cooked up, with little or no practical usage. W3C is guilty of that, and ECMA even more so.
This is interesting, I visited Google Reader site http://www.google.com/reader/view/ and the popup to allow use Google Gears showed up!!! It has a green icon with an arrow on it to go offline. Once clicked it starts downloading all the feeds for offline viewing. Looks like the purpose here is to provide all google apps with online/offline work mode.
It will be interesting to see whether you can use Google Docs offline with the Palm Foleo. The Foleo seems ideal for these kinds of apps.
I think you're confusing vulnerabilities as in "it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government" with vulnerabilities in your next sentence "why would people want more, more, more Google and their vulnerabilities on a computer?". True your privacy is vulnerable if you use any online service but I trust Google's products to be less vulnerable to hackers than any one else's service - which if you're not so hung up on privacy (and I'm not) means that I DO want MORE of Google.
Actually, Sun cooperating with Google to provide an alternative OS to compete with Microsoft wouldn't be such a bad idea.
Since Google has already expertise in using online-dynamic content (from Calendar to Spreadsheet among other...) to provide services to end-users, why not combine a platform-independent programming language like Java with Google's own widgets? Let's admit it, Linux will never beat Windows. But Google with the right partners has a fair chance...
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
I'd prefer this on a less niche phone OS like Symbian OS or Windows mobile.
With Java webstart, apps are automatically downloaded and updated, but if the connection is down, the application still runs. And the UI is fast, rich and responsive, unlike UIs in web apps.
For storage, db4o is a much better proposal than any SQL database; it shortens the development time by orders of magnitude.
Please leave the web browser as it was, i.e. a document browser; there is no need to bloat it with all these extras, when a better alternative is available.
In aviation, when you want to make a mid-size airplane, medium range, 200~300 passengers, low cost, you then will end up with a 737. All I can see is that we have soooo much newer and cooler ways to do the same old recipe, lets go back to our old mainframe formula books and see what can be callled vintage today, revamp it and bring back to its glory days. (I wonder if I can change the colors of this reply to black and bright green)
Derby DB in the Browser
Google Reader makes use of this API right now.
I clicked offline, it downloaded my 2000 latest rss feed entries, I read some, got online, and it syncronized with the server...
Brilliant.
Google Gears of War for the Xbox 360.
Bryan
My guess is that it is still in beta?
The whole advantage of thin-client web applications is you can access them from anywhere you have a browser. If you have to install software on machines then why not just install a proper application which will run lot faster and be more reliable.
Snake? Snake?! Snaaaaaaaake!!!
This must be why google went after googlegear.com, I use to do a fair amount of shopping there at least till I heard about newegg.
I has cockgears. LAWL.
This seems strongly to be poaching the name of TurboGears. Not friendly.
Matt
How about offline authentication to deal with shared computers?
How about database/field encryption?
- Matt
Actually, American manufacturers did make transistor radios early on, but they were insanely expensive.
The way I heard the story was that American enginners were used to high impedence (voltage driven) tightly-speced vacuum tubes. The first transistors to appear on the market were fairly low impedence (current driven) junction devices with characteristics that varied a lot from device to device. American engineers redesigned their circuits for lower impedence, but continued to expect that the active devices would meet tight specs. That meant that manufacturing had to buy devices that were among the tiny subset of the production run that met the engineer's specs. So their transistors were expensive. And so were the radios made using them.
Japanese engineers on the other hand, designed new circuits that would work reliably with just about any transistor that worked at all. That meant that their radios could be built with the semiconductors that were left over after all the ones that met American Engineering specs had been selected out. Those transistors were cheap because there were a lot of them and not many people willing to buy them. As a result, Japanese transistor radios were a LOT cheaper than American designed radios.
Could well be true.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I thought Java FX was developed to fix this problem? Why is Google reinventing the wheel?
You know you are worng, thus preempt the mods.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If we limit ourselves to the West (most of North America, Western/Centra Europe and Australia), then I'll agree with the statement. But once you start looking at more of the developing countries then I think this statement is far from true. Look at places in the middle east, central asia, nearly all of Africa, and even rural america and the internet is still a long ways from being reliable with the necessary bandwidth. On top of the connections not being there, power isn't always stable, so your gateway may or may not have power today even if you do. On top of it, you start slapping a satellite gateway inbetween you and the target IP and your connection just got even worse.
Yes, connectivity is certainly getting better and companies like Inmarsat and Thuraya make their money on providing access in places where connectivity is inherently difficult, but it's still a long ways from being ubiquitous.
The scary part (IMO) is that as the more technically advanced countries become more and more web/internet reliant, the technology divide becomes that much worse for third-world/developing nations. The one laptop per child effort is something that I think will help close this gap a bit, but as the world becomes more internet driven, what good is having a laptop if you don't have sufficient connectivity to tie into it? A lot of these places are still running 64kbps. Have you _TRIED_ surfing at 64kbps these days? It sucks bad!
I'm not saying that the world isn't headed to a webbased interface, or whether or not this is a bad thing. Just saying that there is still a very large portion of the world that is a very long ways off from having sufficient internet connectivity and it certainly would be nice if people kept this in mind when they're developing applications/interfaces.
Just my $0.03
Nonsense. Why does everyone in the computing industry think in absolutes? We don't have to stop using fat clients because someone makes creating thin clients easier. They still both have a place in the world. Use the best tool for the job. Google isn't trying to reinvent anything. They are not trying to take us all back to thin clients. Why would they want to? Just because they are advancing the state of the art for webapps doesn't mean they want every application to be a webapp. They are also pushing a bunch of desktop apps. More importantly, they are pushing the integration of web and desktop apps.
just a great enabler, so i would not put the blame on Google... .Net and Sharepoint specifically on the Windows platform.
Webapps are being developed by all kinds of companies and web sites. Before that the move to n-tier application design started the pendulum. AJAX as a techanology and SOA as a design are pushing the pendulum further that way in general,
Who knows, maybe this centralized lockdown may spawn a similar rebellion against centralized control and computing as was the case with big iron hardware (and thin terminal) vs personal computing.
Or maybe someone will adeptly manage to walk the middle line - and this is where I think Google has an edge over MS.
In the world of cheap Broadband and Wifi the lack of a web connection isn't the biggest drawback is the reliance of a web browser acting as an Office suite. It's completely impracticable but Web 2.0 says we must do it anyway.
The way I see it, internet applications are an all or nothing sort of thing. You either have internet access or you don't. If you have it, you might chose to utilize online apps such as a word processor because it is convenient. The reason you chose to use a browser based word processor is probably largely based on the fact that you DO have regular and consistent internet access. Being able to use it offline is perhaps a bonus, but certainly not essential. As we know, there are plenty of offline word processors/text editors out there to chose from. People with intermittent or no net access are nto deprived of this application. They just have to use a more "traditional" implementation.
Besides apps like Google Docs, which more or less reinvents (badly, i might add) a desktop app, there is very little reason to make an internet app work offline. The very nature of an internet is that it is a shared resource. It doesn't make much sense, except if very specific circumstances, to work with a shared resource offline. That is a contradiction.
One thing that might be interesting are projects that seek to replicate or cache certain internet resources such as Wikipedia on a local networks that don't not have consistent 'net access. That is the kind of thing that developing countries might need. Who cares if people can edit their MySpace page or Flickr account offline? Most net apps are just superfluous crap when you think about what a developing country might need.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I tried the examples and doing some sample apps--I found the programming language for Google Gears basically based on Javascript which, though I've learned how to use it, is pretty unrefined (I avoid using it if I can) and belongs to the non-user-friendly philosophy of "object-oriented programming for object-oriented programming's sake" rather than for practicality or useability's sake.
I think Google will gain more developers and acceptance and a thriving Google Gear community if they offer PHP as an alternative language for programming Google Gears or replace the current language entirely with a PHP+Javascript+HTML+SQL style.
Damn, when I saw that Google was making gears, I was thinking of the man-made bio-organic weapons, not some crappy browser plug-in :( Or at least *some* kind of mecha.
But maybe I expect too much from Google at this point?
Did anybody read the last line of the same article on http://www.ft.com/cms/s/51c32f3c-0efc-11dc-b444-00 0b5df10621.html and scratch their head?
"Microsoft is either going to have to support this or do something like it," says David Mitchell Smith
Seems to me that Google Gears is merely an answer to Microsoft's ActiveX techlology. This web-to-desktop link concept is not new. Google is guilty of what MS usually does.
1) Copy somebody else's successful idea.
2) Dump several million $$$ into it to integrate it tightly with their platform
3) Call it innovation.
I agree completly - it would be great to not allow IE users on your site. Check out codesmack.com from IE to see the welcome message which kindly encourages the users to rethink their life and download a better browser. If you're already using a modern browser you can see what you're missing here. You can buy a shirt with the message "Serriously, you're still using IE?!?". Go ahead and let everyone know what you think of their browser choice. You can read about Firing Your IE Users for more information.
I hope goolge gears will support Safari soon but I'm excited to try this out.
php is server side, and thus any php code must be executed by the server, making online operation impossible. Google's trying to suppliment client-side coding here
MS-DOS: Most Severe Denial of Service
Free Online Backup
Hi. Thanks for your comments. But what I'm saying is Google's client-side coding is based on the Javascript language. I was suggesting they base it on the PHP language (I'm referring to PHP's programming language and not the server-side platform).
We expect more from browsers. Off-line contents / history are not just enough to serve those purposes. It needs some more features like, access to storage and much sophisticated client-side control, much like client-side sand box models.