What’s powering Web apps: Google waving goodbye to Gears, hello to HTML5 : Google is going to ditch Gears when support for HTML 5 penetrates far enough to take its place.
As Google prepares to release its first beta version of Chrome for the Mac (a developer preview has been available for months), the company is letting the sun set on its Gears project.
“We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites,” wrote a Google spokesman in an e-mail.
I guess I had no idea HTML 5 was providing any support like this. I really like Gears – offline GMail has been fantastic so far.