Google Moving Offline @ SEARCH JOURNAL

Google Moving Offline

Google Inches Toward Making Google Docs a Free, Webby, Office-Aspiring Group of Programs That Work Offline

Apr. 8, 2008 03:30 PM

Google is inching toward making Google Docs, its free, webby, Office-aspiring programs, work offline as well as on.

It said Monday that it’s started phasing the Google Gears browser plug-in-derived facility in, beginning with a small percentage of Docs word processor users. It can’t do presentations or spreadsheets yet.

The process will apparently take a few weeks.

Besides storing your files on Google’s servers, they’ll also be stored locally on your drives and the editor will be local too. After that, it’s a matter of synching the two directories.

As long as you have an Internet connection, all changes are saved to the cloud. When you lose the connection you should be able to view and edit your documents and save them locally. When you’re back online, the documents sync up again with the server.

And Google says everything is done through the browser – even when you’re offline.

The offline access will only be available in English. Google says it’s working on other languages as well as making the offline facility available to its Google Apps users.

Zoho took advantage of Google Gears a few months ago to make its web-based text editor available offline.

Microsoft has its web-based Office Live Workspace.

Published Apr. 8, 2008 — Reads 2,589
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media. All Rights Reserved.

About Maureen O'Gara
Maureen O'Gara is the Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025.

LATEST SEO/SEM STORIES

Icahn Moves To Force Microsoft & Yahoo Together

By Maureen O'Gara

Corporate raider Carl Icahn started his proxy fight for control of Yahoo this morning, beginning with the classic Icahn opening, the letter of reproach to the Yahoo board telling them they have acted 'irrationally and lost the faith of shareholders and Microsoft.'

Enterprise Web Security Added to Google Apps

By Maureen O'Gara

Google has taken its Postini investment and turned out Google Web Security for the Enterprise, which is supposed to protect against spyware, viruses and zero-hour threats in real-time whether the user is on the corporate network or working remotely like at a hotel or in an airport. If

3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo: Themes & Topics

By Jeremy Geelan

From Application Virtualization to Xen, a round-up of the virtualization themes & topics being discussed in NYC June 23-24, 2008 by the world-class speaker faculty at the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held by SYS-CON Events in The Roosevelt Hotel, in midtown

Zoho Invites Google & Yahoo Users to Login

By Open Web Developer News Desk

Zoho announced that it is welcoming Google and Yahoo users with a unified login designed to encourage those users to try Zoho applications. Now, Google and Yahoo users who visit Zoho can simply log into Zoho using the usernames and passwords associated with their Google and Yahoo accou

Powerset Seeks to Change the Way Users Search and Consume Web Content

By Search News Desk

'Wikipedia is a great way for us to showcase Powerset's functionality while giving people a faster time to satisfaction,' said Barney Pell, co-founder and CTO of Powerset, as his company today unveiled a publicly available beta product that according to Pell reinvents how users search

Microsoft, Unisys, Yahoo and Vista

By Maureen O'Gara

Microsoft, which spent $6 billion on aQuantive and was chasing Yahoo for its ads before it came to a dead stop, has been supporting - as in helping write - legislation in New York and Connecticut that would regulate the data that companies like Yahoo and Google collect for targeted adv