Google Documents are going offline

One big limit of Google Documents, the Google online office suite, was that it was always subjected to an Internet connection: it allowed you to create and edit a document but you were always in need for connection. Google knows that it cannot compete with other office suites without offering an offline option to its users; on the other hand, users are expecting Google to implement its Google Gears technology for giving offline access to their Google Documents.

Now this hope is becoming a reality: Google has announced that Google Gears is coming also for Google Docs, so every user will be provided with an offline access to documents. Just install Google Gears and that’s it! Google Gears will save your documents on your computer so you will be able to get to them using a browser and writing the appropriate web address http://docs.google.com, or using the Google Desktop Icon. Every offline change to your documents will be saved and synced as soon as you re-gain an Internet connection.

In my opinion, this is one of the most relevant steps for Google in order to build a true alternative to Microsoft Office, Open Office or any other office suite. In fact, this new feature adds to Google Docs the flexibility of a traditional offline suite, but leaving the networking soul of the web apps: as Google itself stated in a recent post, Google Docs means sharing; so the Big G has created a new YouTube channel, the Google Docs Community Channel.

Here you can find and share videos, tips and suggestions about Google Docs, to improve your knowledge about the application. Since its official announcement, Google is slowly adding the offline option to every Google Account, not everyone will get the new feature immediately. On my behalf, I just can’t wait to try it, hoping that next offline step could be Gmail.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Google Applications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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