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One of the biggest features of many of Google’s web apps has been their ability to work offline.  Through Google Gears we’ve been able to use Gmail and Google Docs among others without having an Internet connection.  The offline feature isn’t going away any time soon, but it looks like Gears will be.

Sometime this month, Google will release the beta version of Chrome for Mac, and unlike its Windows counterpart, Chrome for Mac will not feature Google Gears built in.  Part of this is technical, Snow Leopard won’t run Gears properly, but that’s not the main reason.  Google is slowly turning away from Gears, and turning its focus to HTML 5.  HTML 5 has the ability to work offline, and will work with any browser that supports it (which is everyone but IE).  This doesn’t mean that Google will stop supporting Gears.  The company will continue to support it as long as people use it.  If HTML 5 can do everything Gears does, however, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to continue using the old system.

With offline access support, HTML 5 looks to be the wonder child that Google claims it is.  Its doubtful that it will supplant all browser plugins, but the ability to use services offline, and have embedded video without relying on the resource-heavy Flash sound really nice.  Of course Internet Explorer might be holding it back from being adopted more quickly, but hopefully that issue can be fixed soon.

Read [Webmonkey]