Google Apps, Offline Edition

Google is pursuing its “everything web” endeavor and has just released new versions of GMail, Calendar and Google Docs that can work even when there is no internet connection (although Google Docs did have the feature on an ON and OFF basis). It’s great that Google is addressing this issue because networks are simply not always available, and this is the reason why “old” productivity apps like Microsoft Office or Open Office are still so popular.

GMail offline is found as a Chrome Store App (it is free) while Google Calendar and Google Docs are to be used from the usual website, although will work in read-only mode when no network is available. On the contrary, GMail users will be able to create new messages and have them queued until a network access is available.

At the moment, this seems to work only with Google’s Chrome web browser, but Google is looking into making it available to other browsers. However, Google does not say why these “web apps” don’t work from the get go on other browsers, like Firefox.