We all knew this was coming and it has finally come. The final problem of offline access to web-based services has been addressed by Google Gears which was released last week. Today, I saw the first instance of it being available to the end user via the Google Reader.
You can have consistent, transparent access to all your favorite websites/web applications through the browser. The OS becomes less important now and the need for natively installed OS specific applications is greatly reduced.
It would be interesting to see the changes this will bring in our world!
i don’t know if i trust google with my desktop stuff. as it is, with google desktop i didn’t enjoy my entire hdd being mirrored and i removed it within a week or so. then there was that fiasco with google web accelerator changing your packet sizes and what not. i don’t know if i trust another company to take care of my hardware. i’m getting more and more wary of google as it keeps expanding it’s product base.
The problem is that in the absence of compelling features from competitors, more and more people seem comfortable with accepting the terms of Google’s products. I agree with your concerns about the data being available for Google to parse and cache and build more “knowledge”. I just hope there are other alternatives to it and there are more interoperability standards in place for any future company to have a fair chance in the market if they decide to offer competing services.