Google’s recent announcement of Gears - an API for supporting offline operation of mobile apps - is creating the usual wave of hype whenever Google-god puts out a beta.

Offline storage is an old technique of the mobile world and was essential to so many prehistoric apps, simply because the network connection was unreliable. In that sense, it goes against the philosophy of “always connected” computing that mobile has always aspired to. However, I don’t think it’s aimed at the poor network problem. It’s really a means of bringing a richer programming model to the browser - thinware gone fat - but retaining the browser-centricity.

Where it will prove useful in mobile web contexts is if it can be used to cache data, such as large image uploads, until such time as certain network conditions are met, such as within WiFi coverage rather than 3G/GPRS coverage. In this sense, a local cache is a seamless mobility technology.

This means that network coverage is still possible, but the web application chooses not to upload large data sets until the coverage meets certain conditions. This is a slightly different model than pure online/offline computing. It is a hybrid and such a model would be extremely useful for mobile web applications.

An example would be using Gmail on the move. I want to check my mail, compose messages etc, but I don’t want the 5MB powerpoint I just attached to actually get sent because it will cost too much or take too long. However, I still want to continue seamlessly as if I’m using the app as normal, without having to change my work pattern to suit my network connection.

That’s a stodgy corporate example. Uploading a video to Youtube might be more sexy, along with 101 other UGC apps.