Google Abandoning Gears

harrymcc noted a story talking about what might be the end of Google Gears. The concept has always been interesting, but it seems that Google is beginning to think of Gears as more of a proof of concept, and that focus will shift to HTML5, which has the same functionality.

Comments

Summary is not accurate

[yakatz]

Saying that Google is abandoning Gears is not 100% accurate as it has bad connotations.

Google created Gears to fill the void until browser makers would implement HTML5. Now that they are doing so, Gears is being retired.

Re:Summary is not accurate

[TheRaven64]

Exactly. HTML 5 is being deployed piecemeal, and Gears uses the HTML 5 features when they're available, falling back to its own functionality when it isn't. When all that Gears is doing is delegating functionality to the native HTML 5 implementation, it's pointless and just adds a layer of indirection that slows everything down.

Gears is out and works now. HTML 5 is starting to be widely deployed and all of the major browser manufacturers are backing it (MS announced IE9 will support it). When HTML 5 is universal, there will be no point in Gears. It never had a long-term future, it was just a prototype. Several of the HTML 5 features are lifted directly from Gears, so saying Google are abandoning Gears is no more interesting than saying Microsoft are abandoning Windows 95.

Re:Summary is not accurate

[Just Some Guy]

Except for those people who are still using IE 6 or Netscape 4.

That's their problem. The cost-benefit ratio of supporting those ancient systems (and enabling the defective IT departments that stick with them) just isn't worth it anymore. Let them have their Geocities-era sites and funky rendering while the rest of us enjoy the last decade's worth of progress.

Re:Summary is not accurate

[bvankuik]

This argument comes up time and time again. I don't think it is a valid one. Sure, a couple of corporate apps are limited to IE6. So? An admin could just make a shortcut in the start menu that launches IE. For the rest (ie. normal web browsing), the admin could install any of the more modern browsers.

I think the "IE6 lock-in" is a myth.
 

makes sense

[fedorfedor]

Gears was a smart way to get important new features into stagnant older browsers (we're looking at you, IE...) and implemented far more quickly than any standards process allows. Now that those features are in the HTML5 standard, there's no reason to require gears. Until the next round of feature-adding, of course...

HTML 5

[jo42]

Makes one wonder how much of this "HTML 5 will do this", "HTML 5 will do that" is hype or wishful thinking. Past experience has shown great disappointment in all this hyperbole...

Re:HTML 5

[Transfinite]

from actually working with this stuff. Quite alot already.

Re:HTML 5

[slim]

HTML 5 does exactly what it says it does.

Dive into HTML 5 tells you what that is, and whether your browser supports it.

It's up to developers to apply it. Google is doing so.

Re:HTML 5

[Blakey Rat]

HTML5 is pretty slick, but you have to remember most sites will never upgrade to it.

One of the problems with the web is whenever you add a new markup, you still have to support the old markup. One of the reasons I thought that XHTML was mostly a waste of time was that everybody involved in it was acting like a year after XHTML2 came out, HTML2,3,4 would instantly disappear and browsers could simplify their parsing, becoming faster... the reality is, the vast majority of sites will never switch over.

HTML5 is a better idea, since at least it's not a completely new way of doing things. But since it does the few things XHTML did that HTML 4 didn't, now browsers have to support a totally useless XHTML strict syntax in addition.

Ugh.

Re:BLOAT

[Transfinite]

what! doesn't anyone actually think things through before opening their mouths anymore? Everything you'd tried to apply some whale meme anaolgy to is wrong. Developers need to get this into their heads: 1. the days of request -> response -> request are going 2. more load is going to be placed of client resources. 3. Data should be stateless, your client will retain state HTML5 improves efficiency, removes latency. So why is that a bad thing? WebWorkers, WebSockets??? No? Then go and read the specs before to dismiss them off hand.

Re:BLOAT

[bunratty]

You're right. I think we've all taken the wrong approach with huge, bloated standard libraries. Let all developers write all code from scratch. Need to output an integer, just write the code that turns the integer into a stream of characters, then pass that stream of characters into your homebrew I/O functions, which pass them off to your custom built drivers. There's no need for all languages to have this functionality! It just makes developers have to code around the differences and bugs in each runtime!

Time to ...

[PePe242]

shift gear

Re:the only reason I'll miss gears

[slim]

I'm no web designer so perhaps I'm misunderstanding TFA, but is offline script caching one of the features of HTML5?

Yes.
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/offline.html#offline

JavaScript speed wars

[PCM2]

One of the more overlooked features of Gears is its JavaScript parser, which allows apps to execute JavaScript in a separate thread from the rest of the page to improve performance. Now that Google has released Chrome, it makes less sense for it to keep working on a hack to allow Firefox and IE to run JavaScript more efficiently. Chrome is incentive enough for Mozilla and Microsoft to start doing that for themselves.