New from Google: Google Gears

While everyone attention is WSJ's D - Google launched beta version of Google Gear which allows web application runs locally. Below is the information I clipped from Google Gear site.

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs:
Store and serve application resources locally
Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.2+
• Firefox 1.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+
Google Gears (BETA) is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux

This is currently for Google Reader, but I can see where it is going. Imagine you can do your Gmail, Calendar, Docs&Spreadsheet, and other Google application locally in any platform offline and online. You get yourself a full application experience! You don't need email client and office suite anymore - Microsoft, watch out.

I see a lot of potential with Gears and it will be interesting to see the transformation of computing experience because of this.