Google Moving Away from Gears, Towards HTML 5

Posted 12/02/2009 at 7:00am | by Paul Lilly

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Google's Gears may not be long for this world. According to an article in the LA Times, Google is ready to let go of its Gears utility, which, once installed, allows for offline caching of emails, drag and drop file uploading, and the such. The reason? Much of the same functionality is starting to show up in HTML 5.

Gears is still in use, but according to the report, Google will bid its technology adieu as it prepares for the first beta version of Chrome for the Mac.

"We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML 5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites," a Google spokesman told the LA Times in an email.

Worried that HTML 5 isn't yet ready for prime time? Don't be. While Google will give Gears the boot, it won't happen overnight. In a followup email, the same Google spokesman said that the search giant will continue "to support Gears so that nothing breaks for sites that use it. But we expect developers to use HTML 5 for these features moving forward."