Google signs death warrant for Gears, begins move to HTML5

Over at ReadWriteWeb, Sarah Perez has blogged about one significant change to Google Docs that many of us missed when they big upgrade was announced a couple days ago. On May 3rd, Google will be temporarily disabling offline access in Google Docs and paving the way for something new.

"We are working hard to bring a new and improved HTML5-based offline option back to Google Docs," reads the official announcement. So yes, that does mean that Google Gears will soon be a thing of the past -- and it makes perfect sense. With HTML5 bringing Gears-like support for similar client-side abilities, Google has the opportunity to move to a standard and away from 3rd-party plug-in status.

After all, plug-ins can easily be blocked (as we've seen before with Firefox). HTML5 will provide restriction-free access to any offline functionality Google decides to build in to Docs regardless of platform -- as long as users run a compliant browser, of course...

...like Google Chrome, which could very well gain some new users when people find out their current browser doesn't fully support the reworked Offline access mode.

It's not too much of a stretch to call this is the beginning of the end for Gears.

Next stop: GMail?

Tags: gears, google, html5