Google Software Goes Offline

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February 5, 2009

While companies like Microsoft, Adobe and Apple have been evolving their desktop software so that it can extend onto the web, Google has been striving to make it’s web-based software available when a user doesn’t have web access. Users have been able to sync their Google Docs software for a while now - allowing their wordprocessing, spreadsheet and presentation software to be used offline through a browser. Now Google have announced that their popular email system can be used offline too. Like desktop software, users can access the latest sync of their emails through a browser, work on them and then schedule them to be sent when the user next logs online.

A recent post on the Gmail blog says:

Today we’re starting to roll out an experimental feature in Gmail Labs that should help fill in those gaps: offline Gmail. So even if you’re offline, you can open your web browser, go to gmail.com, and get to your mail just like you’re used to.

Once you turn on this feature, Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you’re connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail’s servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer’s hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you’re used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection. And if you’re on an unreliable or slow connection (like when you’re “borrowing” your neighbor’s wireless), you can choose to use “flaky connection mode,” which is somewhere in between: it uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background. Our goal is to provide nearly the same browser-based Gmail experience whether you’re using the data cached on your computer or talking directly to the server.