Well, here is my prediction after digesting most of the content that came out of G-Day. Google Gears will soon make MS Office (and for that matter most “installed” applications) obsolete. Google’s Gears homepage explains that Gears is …
<<... an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs:
– Store and serve application resources locally
– Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
– Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness>>
Google in a press release states that Gears “marks an important step in the evolution of web applications because it addresses a major user concern: availability of data and applications when there’s no Internet connection available, or when a connection is slow or unreliable.” They go on to say that making the browser environment more powerful is increasingly important (Google snatched up a couple of Firefox developers – this makes even more sense in the light of this announcement).
Well I guess at this point we can just wait and see. Let’s just hope google doesn’t turn into the next MS when they get to the top.