The Google Hamburger
I wrote a post a while ago about Google Gears, and how I wasn’t entirely convinced it’s the solution to the current problems on the internet. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s essentially a plugin you install in your browser that, when coupled with some javascript code, will give certain webpages the ability to offline content onto your hard drive. An example of this is Google reader — I believe if you have Google Gears installed you can manually download content to disk and view it offline later.
First, I have to ask, is that really necessary? The whole premise behind Google Gears is the assumption that people want to access a bunch of web pages even when they are offline. But is that accurate? Would it help if I could access the WordPress dashboard offline and write an entry? Maybe, but I can just jot one down in Word or VI real quick if I need to. What about the Google Reader example? Sure, it’s neat. But considering many of the blogs I subscribe to only provide excerpts and not full entries, it’s basically useless to me to unless I can get at the actual site. Same goes for comments. If I have a comment or suggestion while reading, am I really going to remember to log back online later, head over to the real site, and jot it down? I doubt it.
Also, how often are most of you offline nowadays? Google Gears seems to be basically targeted at the hardcore geek market right now. But seriously, most tech-savy places (other than Canada) already have realistic prices for unlimited wireless data plans. Except for airplanes, most people have the ability to be online almost all the time already, so is it worth the effort (that is, rewriting websites to work with Google Gears) to allow people to use them when offline?
There’s another aspect to Google Gears where apparently it can download an entire CSS/JS/IMG bundle from the webserver and store it locally. The idea behind this being that you can serve up the content rather quickly, and without an internet connection. This is basically HTTP caching, which has been around for years (although, you still need a connection to do proper HTTP caching). But in my mind, that functionality isn’t very useful if, after loading, you can’t utilize the same functionality of the website that you’re used to when it’s online. Sure, I can sit and look at a pretty website offline, but if I can’t interact with it, or follow links, is it useful?
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Google Gears is all everyone thinks it will be, and it will spawn the next generation of amazing applications. I hope so. But let’s take a quick look at what other people are saying about it. We’ll utilize Google’s Trends service for that. Gander, if you will, at the following chart, which compares internet buzz for three things: 1) Google Gears 2) WordPress and 3) everyone’s favourite 50 year-old meat product, the hamburger.
As you can see, WordPress generates a ton of interest, as it should. But looking at Google Gears, it’s been basically flat, with only a few random blips when Google throws a bunch of press out about it. In fact, when compared to the hamburger, it’s hard to tell what people find more interesting, the food, or the offline content delivery system.
You want some fries with that content?
Photo from here
8 Comments
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I used to want offline content, but honestly at this point, I’m online a vast majority of the time.
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It might be dedicated to the core’d geekers, but I think we’d agree that this is part of the effort for total integration, so that the distinction between online and offline becomes ever more blurry, let alone what it means to update our respective status via IM, website, 3rd-party app, widget, or mobile phone. IMNSHO, the (existence of an) “Off” button or switch is going to become even more important.
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Offline content would be great if it could make you “online”. But I agree with Raul, other than the Canadian mobile phone issues, I can pretty much be online whenever I need to be.
That hamburger looks unbelievable btw – egg + pineapple…looks like a good aussie burger “with the lot” minus beetroot.
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BNC Design Guru
2 years, 2 months
I want to eat my hamburger offline, will Gears let me do that?
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I think the point to gears is not particular to reading offline content but allowing a web application to continue to function in an offline environment. The best example I can think of.. think of a company like Comcast, where they’ve got tons of technicians moving around and accomplishing tasks and objectives, no where near any WiFi yet when they come back to the office they’re going to need to synchronize what they’ve accomplished.
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I only ever use Gears when I am on a plane and even then, I’ve spent the time to set it up and offline all my feeds then never use it because I just watch a movie instead.
Plus it doesn’t work with Safari which is a pain since I usually only use Firefox at work (on a PC).
I think the concept of Gears is cool but it needs to work with everything (maybe baked into the browser) and not just some things from Google. But the value is also decreasing the more we’re hooked into the things like Twitter and Facebook that change every second/minute.
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BNC Development Guru
2 years, 2 months
I totally agree – it really has to work with everything for it to take off, and right now, it doesn’t at all.
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Not being a geek I came across Google Gears and the concept of offline apps which I started using Remember the Milk. I also found it handy when I wanted to work on a google document I was using.
The question for me is whether it will change/enhance the way I do things. The answer feel is no. I could easily ‘work round’ this and come up with another solution.
If I don’t have internet access and need to do something do I think “oh good there’s google gears – fantastic!” ???
No, I normally think “where CAN I get internet access?”
