Official download: Google Gears for Windows Beta

Following Adobe, Microsoft, and Firefox, Google has finally launched its own offline application design environment: Google Gears. This is an environment that allows web applications to store data offline and run offline. For example, perhaps Gmail will be able to download emails locally after going online, then reply offline before going back online to send all the emails at once. Such an environment takes web applications to a new level, eventually leading to the convergence of desktop and web.

The first application to use Gears technology will be Google's own Google Reader. Google will add a green "download to local" button to it, which when clicked will download unread feeds to your local device. Afterward, regardless of whether you're offline or not, you can read your feeds freely.

Google Gears provides three modules: a local server for storing and reading offline applications; a small database for storing local data; and a worker pool that allows developers to synchronize local data with the server end.

At the same time, Adobe expressed support for Google Gears. Adobe's Apollo will also be compatible with Gears. Mozilla also stated that they support Google's work in open source and open standards for offline web applications, which is a big step forward for offline web applications.

Official website: http://gears.google.com/?platform=win

Supports Windows XP/Vista, Firefox 1.5+ / Internet Explorer 6.0+

Official download:

http://dl.google.com/gears/GoogleGearsSetup.exe