Google vows to bring the cloud with you
Users of Google's highly useful Google Docs have been hoping for offline access to their work ever since Google announced plans in 2007 to make Google Apps completely usable when offline.
Now, those hopes are close to being fulfilled. Speaking on the official Google Docs blog, Philip Tucker, a Google Docs software engineer, said:
"We know that many of you have been waiting for offline access to Google Docs, and I'm happy to tell you we'll be rolling it out over the next few weeks, starting today with a small percentage of users."
Google Docs' offline features work via Google's open-source project, Google Gears, which developers can use to build offline components for web applications.
For Google Docs, Gears temporarily stores documents onto a user's local computer. At present, only Google's word processing application will be supported but the company states it is "working to make more Web applications and functions work where connections are unavailable".
Here's a Google-created video demonstrating how offline access to Google Docs could be of benefit to the user:
It's proving to be an interesting battle as both Microsoft and Google head in opposite directions to achieve the same feat. Microsoft has been pushing to take its desktop-based Microsoft Office suite online via Microsoft Office Live. Google on the other hand, is taking giant steps to bring its web-based Google Docs to the desktop.
The first to achieve true, seamless desktop and web-based Office integration will surely be onto a winner.
