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Best of Both Worlds: Offline Access for Online Applications

by Bud Parr on March 31, 2008

Google reports today that they are rolling out offline access for their Google Docs application and that will be just the first as they utilize their Open Source browser extension Google Gears to download and upload data from your hard drive to the Web in the background. This will allow you to use Google docs (and in the future other apps, I’ve already seen it in use on a nifty to-do app called Remember the Milk) whether or not you’re near an internet connection.

According to Macworld “Google has lofty aspirations that Apps – with Docs in tow – will extend its reach into medium-size and large companies, and to that end has been boosting its security and administration features, particularly in its fee-based Premier version.”

This is good news because I believe one of the major hurtles Web-based applications have to overcome is availability (at least until every corner of the earth has Wi-fi or its next iteration). Although the aggressively functional Zoho suite of online apps offers offline access, it’s Google’s success that will drive the industry toward Web apps. As offline access becomes a typical feature, adoption of online apps will widen and developers will be able to create better and more varied applications.

The key to Web-based applications is not just the convenience of never having to synch devices or being able to collaborate with teams (or coordinate with family), but the ease with which data can be used from one app to enhance another – say for instance, you could pull financial data in from an accounting app and manipulate it in a spreadsheet app, without downloading or synchronizing. It remains to be seen exactly how the new functionality will handle this “mashed up” data, but as with all of this technology, it’s a work in progress.