Google Gears is a technology that allows you to use applications like Google Docs and Gmail offline. If you want to continue writing but you don’t have an Internet connection, you can do it just like in a word processor installed on your machine. Once saved, you can move that document or any document to any folder. Once you’re connected to the Internet again, all changes will be synced to the online version of Google Docs.

Actually, Google will no longer pursue this technology. It’s the end of Google Gears. However, this does not mean that Google will stop this functionality. On the horizon is HTML5, which will provide a similar, if not better, use of this technology.

The big problem with Gears is that Google has to program it to work with all operating systems and all browsers to keep it working. It worked on Mac at some point, but with Snow Leopard there was a change that made Google Gears no longer work. It is not known if this was intentional or not. On Linux, depending on whether you were able to configure it, it might work, but sometimes it doesn’t.

With HTML5, these processes will be integrated into the Chrome browser and there will be support for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Since all operating systems and browsers will support HTML5, there is no chance for developers or companies to disable these Google apps.