On April 1st, Google announced that their Google Docs application now works offline.

This is kind of the direction that people have been taking for a while... being able to use Rich Internet Application technology like Adobe AIR to work on web forms, but take them offline for later viewing. However, Google decided to take an oddly different approach.

They decided to use Google Gears, which is a combination of a browser plug-in, a mini web server, and a SQL database. You don't need to use Java or Flash in order to save data to the database, you just use standard JavaScript calls.

Its like AJAX on crack. And if done right, it could break down even more walled gardens than Web 2.0 did.

Currently, Google Gears is only in its 0.2 release: very very very beta. Not like GMail beta, or Google Docs beta... but so beta that maybe they should call it alpha or something. What I found interesting was the possible effect this strategy will have on the rest of Google's applications. Take Spreadsheets offline? How about my Analytics data? Why not GMail? The process would be this:

• Connect to your Google online app.
• Use Gears to synchronize your local database with Google data.
• Take your application offline.
• Run everything you need by connecting to the Gears web server, and getting back chunks of HTML/XML.

Now... What happens when you add Greasemonkey to the mix?

Greasemonkey is a popular little application that allows you to inject custom HTML and JavaScript into other people's web sites. Do you want an extra link on the home page to take you directly to the latest news? No problem. Don't like the way GMail organizes its buttons? Re-arrange them. Hate the look and feel of a site? Use a custom stylesheet.

Don't like how GMail organizes its back-end data store? Well, too bad, you can't use Greasemonkey to force GMail to store or retrieve your data differently... that is, unless Gmail uses Gears!

If so, I could inject custom code to not only synchronize with my online database, but store it however I want. Previously, Greasemonkey could only access existing content -- provided it was available through AJAX or Remote Scripting. But when combined with Gears, Greasemonkey scripts can perform radical analysis of web content, and store the processed information locally! It can also synchronize back to the main site, for proper online storage...

In effect, Greasemonkey allows end users to inject customized code for web page display... but Greasemonkey plus Gears allows you to inject a whole custom web application! So what??? Well, imagine being able to do this:

• Use GMail to store up all the email questions and answers on a community group. Use Greasemonkey to keep a running count of who helps answers questions (gurus), versus who just demands answers (leeches)... then avoid helping the leeches.
• Use a Greasemonkey script to run custom reports based on Google Analytics data, and present it right in the browser.
• Create an offline Google Spreadsheet with Gears. Then, go to any one of the popular online polling apps (Surveymonkey) or web form designers (Wufoo). Use a Greasemonkey script to access the raw data from the reports, process it, and inject it into a Google Spreadsheet. Sync the offline spreadsheet with Google. and now the report is online for all to see!
• Transfer information from one site -- say Facebook -- into any other site -- say LinkedIn -- without having to use their proprietary APIs, or let the sites know the password for the other site! Just use a Greasemonkey spider to grab the information, store it locally, and upload it when appropriate.

Naturally... the security risks are profound... If Gears ever got popular, a little JavaScript on an evil site could read much more than just your cookies... So its important to lock down the ability for one site to read another site's database. However, we should probably relax access for things like cross-site Greasemonkey, otherwise we'll miss out on most of the value of Gears.

Will it bring about the next gen of the web? Web 3.0? Web 4.5? Maybe web candle plus monkey? We'll see what happens in Gears 0.3...

UPDATE: Jake had the suggestion that it might be more useful to use Mozilla Prism with Greasemonkey, as opposed to Google Gears. Lifehacker recently profiled Prism. That depends on how this plays out... Prism would work great for Firefox-based rich internet apps... whereas Adobe AIR and Google Gears would be more cross-platform. If you want iPhone support, you'll need Safari. Although at present Prism is more feature complete than Gears.

Overall, I think Google Gears is going in a better direction than AIR or Prism, because they are following the maxim don't break the web!... but time will tell if they can actually deliver.