Monday, September 15, 2008 4:52 PM/EST

Google Launches Gears for Apple Safari Browser

Google continued its offline access march Sept. 15 by launching Google Gears for Apple's Safari browser on the Mac OS X operating system.

The upgrade means you can now access sites that support Gears, including Google Docs, Picasa Web Albums, Google Reader, Zoho office apps, WordPress and the YouTube uploader via Safari.

Google Gears, which lets users store data locally in a database, is an important part of Google's strategy to help users access their Docs, Zoho documents and other data when there is spotty Web access or even no Internet connection at all.

Offline access is pretty much table stakes at this point in the business world, particularly with all of the business travelers flying to and from conventions and conferences.

Now Gears' features -- including the ability to create desktop shortcuts for Web sites, as well as geolocation and "Blobs," which are useful for uploads of large files -- all work in Safari.

According to Net Applications, Safari's browser market share increased from 5.09 to 6.37 percent from October 2007 to August 2008. That makes Gears support for Safari important in my book.

What's next from Google regarding Gears? Well, I know lots of Googlers use Macs and many of them flat-out love all things Apple, so I'm willing to wager we'll be seeing Gears support extended to Apple's iPhone next.

Anyone agree or disagree?

Comments (5)

Lautaro Vargas :

"I'm willing to wager we'll be seeing Gears support extended to Apple's iPhone next."

You're not the first to speculate like this, Tom Christie went into much more detail about a secret game-changing collaboration between Google and Apple two days previous:

http://tomchristie.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-and-apple-all-is-revealed.html

Posted by Lautaro Vargas | September 16, 2008 5:14 AM

manash :

It really is great news. It means that you can have easy access to some of the most interesting sites.

http://www.safaribrowserwindows.com

Posted by manash | September 16, 2008 9:17 AM

amit :

safari is sure one of the browser available in the market at present so those are looking forward to switch over to another must try it.

http://www.safaribrowserwindows.com

Posted by amit | September 18, 2008 8:44 AM

Anna :

Great upgradation!!Especially the access to Google Docs is really very helpful.