Earlier this week, I wrote a synopsis of Google Gears based on industry and what Google itself said about the product in its forums in press-releases.

I told you we would continue to follow developments on the topic as they occurred.

And today, one occurred.

I tried it.

I suppose attempted to try it would have been a better phrasing. .

My personal system is a Mac, on which I use Mozilla’s Firefox as my browser.

Whoops.

Go to the Google Gears Messageboard and you will discover the first major product glitch: Google Gears does not play well with Firefox, Opera, or Safari.

Some may chuckle and call that a ‘feature’ and not a ‘bug’. But this is a pluralist society, people. A product that doesn’t work on Mac’s most common surf-apps is cutting out a very desirable demographic (and I’m not just tooting my own horn, here.)

So I wheeled my executive chair to the other side of this partner’s desk to my partner’s shiny Wintel PC .

Lo! And Behold! Google Gears for Google reader does, in fact, work as advertised.

If you want to see screencaps and a great post on the experience - check out Rusty Brick’s post over at Search Engine Roundtable.

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Obvious Statement #147: Your web-based apps stop working when your drop your Internet connection.

But… what if it didn’t have to be that way?

Last week as the worldwide Google Developer Day 2007 kicked off, Google officially announced what had been its worst-kept secret - Google Gears is here.

Google Gears is an extension that allows developers to enhance their web-based applications (like Google Reader, see beta here) so they work even without web access.

Simplistically? It’s open-source multi-platform JavaScript Application Programming Interface (API) that lets Web applications work offline by creating a local cache on your hard drive .

Yes, before you say it, the desktop traditionally is Microsoft territory.

But Google Gears is more than another David-wannabe with a slingshot and a sharp rock. Already, Gears has a lot of support behind it: Adobe Software, Mozilla Corp., and Opera Software all made statements of support.

No one is arguing that traditional desktop applications have their place. The code does not yet exist to make a product like Adobe’s Creative Suite, especially the industry-standard Photoshop, effective as a web-based app.

But for the standard corporate user, managing desktop applications can be a hassle. Even if you are using a product - like Lotus Notes - that lets you work offline or online, you still have to synch and organize as you move between laptop and desktop, or during hardware upgrades. “I think the growth of the Internet has really reflected the difficulties people have running desktop software,” Chris DiBona, open source programs manager at Google told InformationWeek.

What does Google Gears mean right now? Not much beyond a way to make it easier to bring today’s industry news with you onto the airplane.

But looking at the horizon, expect an evolution. Google has word processing and spreadsheet applications that will soon be available to you for both online collaboration and as an offline tool.

Now that developers have their hands on the code, we’ll stay on top of the products and innovations as they are released.

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