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Google Gears Powers Many Web Apps, Should Make it Into Firefox

Recently, we covered market research that found that almost half of open source developers are focused on the cloud. As web applications make more sense for everybody, and as the software-as-a-service model and its pay-as-you-go advantages become clearer, the trend is understandable. Today, I took note of this post on the Zoho blog, which has an interesting list of a few of the web-based applications--many of them commercial apps--that are based on Google Gears. Gears, of course, is Google's open source project, based on an open API, for enabling more powerful online and offline applications by adding useful features to browsers. It's still very young, released in 2007, but very influential on the web.

The list that Zoho cites is below. Google Gears underlies a whole lot of very popular applications. It powers MySpace's messaging, and underlies everything from WordPress to the useful to-do tracker RememberTheMilk. Open source developers focused on web applications may want to watch these video case studies about Gears, from Google. 

I also agree with the folks at Zoho that it would be good for Gears to be included in the Firefox browser, as it is in Google Chrome. That could represent yet another advantage the open source browsers have over Internet Explorer. Here is the list of some of the most notable Gears-based apps:

• wordpress
• google
• MySpace
• Gears

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