Google (finally) brings Gmail and Calendar offline
by aakar on January 27, 2009
Very excited about this.
Jeez, I’ve been waiting a while for this one. Starting today, Google is rolling out offline support for Gmail users, which means you’ll finally be able to read and write emails even when you’re not connected to the web. A company spokesperson says users of Google’s business software package Google Apps will also be able to view their Calendar offline sometime in “the next couple of weeks.”
This move has been rumored for a long time. For example, consultant Andrew Fogg reported seeing offline versions of Gmail and Calendar back in July, and said they would be available in six weeks. That didn’t happen; perhaps bringing Gmail’s powerful search tool and gigabytes of storage offline proved more complicated than expected. Meanwhile, an hours-long Gmail outage in August illustrated the the dangers of storing all your data in the Internet cloud.
Gmail Offline uses Google’s Gears technology and must be “turned out” via Gmail Labs, where Google tests out new features. It will available in both consumer Gmail accounts and Google Apps business accounts (in some cases, your Apps domain administrator will need enable the feature) – as with other Gmail features, the rollout is random; if you don’t see it right away, it’s probably coming in a day or two
Of course, you have to wonder how Google balances Gmail’s promise that you’ll never need to delete an email again with the requirements of offline support, which involves downloading emails to your desktop. In my case, that could take up to 3 gigabytes of my hard drive. But Google says Gmail Offline only downloads some of your emails: “a good chunk of the inbox, all starred messages, ones you’re drafting, recent sent mail, etc.”
I haven’t been this excited to try out a new Google product in a long, long time. If Gmail Offline works as promised, I expect I’ll be uninstalling Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client ASAP, since I just use it as a backup for my Gmail account. I also expect many desktop email users to make the switch to Gmail, since they’ve run out of excuses to avoid it. Matt Marshall, I’m looking at you.
[photo:flickr/Lance and Erin]