The idea behind Google Gears is to create a single, standardised way to add offline capabilities to web applications, said Linus Upson, the engineering director at Google.

The initial code is aimed at JavaScript developers who write Ajax-style web applications. It runs on Internet Explorer on Windows; Firefox on Windows, Mac OS and Linux; and on the Safari Mac OS browser.

Google expects to release the first production version, i.e. non-beta of Google Gears "within months". It also expects to submit the code to a standards body so that it will eventually be built into all standards-compliant browsers, Upson said.

Google Reader is the first application to take advantage of the new code. Once people install the browser plug-in, they can read RSS content when they're offline and then synchronise with the RSS feed provider when they get back online.

Furthermre, Google announced that Google Gears has been endorsed by the Mozilla Foundation, makers of the open-source Firefox browser, as well as Adobe Systems, the developer of Flash, and Opera Software, which makes the Opera browser.

It builds on existing open source technologies itself, using SQLite as its database backend. So far I am quite impressed with it and although at the moment only Google Reader takes advantage of it, I don't think we'll have to wait long for may more apps to take advantage of it. Especially once it is officially standardised.