Google Docs now available offline through Gears

Frederic    google    

Scoble has the scoop that Google Docs is now going to be available offline in a video over at fastcompany.tv (Update: and here is the official Google announcement, too).

As expected, it is running on top of Google Gears (meaning it’s available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, but doesn’t work with Safari) and looks and works pretty much like the Google Reader offline mode.

One weird thing is that you can only edit your text documents offline and that it is read-only for spreadhsheets and presentations.

The Scoble video is mercifully short (as far as Scoble’s videos go) and talks about all the major questions people might have, including synching documents edited by two people offline at the same time (seems like it’s pretty much a manual process).

Well, I’m sure lots of people see this as another stone around MS Office’s neck, but as of now, I remain a big fan of a fully featured word processor. Call me old-fashioned but I don’t do collaborative editing and I need a bit more from my word processor than any of the online suites have given me so far.

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